Some people are under the impression that divorce is a 20th century habit that rarely occurred in the 1800's. To some degree this is true in the northeast part of America with its Puritan roots but southern traditions were more lenient on the subject. It is certainly an error in searching your family tree to assume that a change in spouse indicates the death of the first husband or wife.

One reason that they may have been a considerable number of divorces is that marriage was virtually a necessity as it took both husband and wife to do the work needed for family survival. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that many couple married in haste only to discover that they were not at all suited to one another. An impossible marriage could even threaten the entire well-being of the family.

In later years it became almost a foregone conclusion that the mother would generally retain the custody of the children. That was not true in the earlier years. In fact, with the exception of babes in arms, the father generally kept the children as every hand was needed to maintain the household and children were regarded to some degree as free labor.

There were two ways to obtain a divorce. The state legislature could be petitioned for an act giving a divorce or the case could be presented for the circuit court. Probably due to the distance to the state capitol, most Harlan County residents chose the local circuit court.

Some divorce cases are short and to the point such as John C. Howard's divorce from his first wife, Matilda Brock, granted in 1853. His one paragraph petition states that she abandoned him two years previously and has ever since lived in open adultery with another man and that she is a non-resident of the state.

Brief depositions by Hezekiah Jennings and Joseph Saylor agree that some two or three years ago John C. Howard's wife Matilda left him and removed to "some foreign country" and had not returned. It must be added that the phrase "some foreign county" does not necessarily mean a country other than the United States. It most likely means some state other than Kentucky.

In many instances, the divorce appears to be mutually agreeable. Although the law did not recognize `divorce by agreement,' a reading of some cases does leave that impression such as that of Judah Sergent versus James Sergent. In 1836, in her petition, Judah accuses him of living in adultery with Catherine Cornitt and others, adultery being the grounds for divorce. In his statement, James admits to the adultery with Catherine, but denies any others and the decree is granted.

William Ely's 1827 divorce from his first wife, Rebecca Saylor, was apparently mutually agreeable as was John Helton's 1839 divorce from Happy `Pink' Howard who later married Andrew Hensley.

A divorce record is often a source for discovering of the wife's maiden name as it is true in both these cases as well as that of Andrew Manning's divorce in 1826 from Polly Foster Manning and Jonathan Creech's 1825 divorce from Polly Anglin Creech. The latter case also gives the date of the marriage, 1807.

Many cases are far more detailed with charges and counter-charges. These can be made even more confusing by the time lapse that occurred in cases filed just before the Civil War. The courts often did not even meet during the war years and thus several years later were taken up again by the parties with additional petitions and charges.

One such case is that of Nathan Noe versus Sirena Noe. Nathan had married Sirena, daughter of Lewis and Anne Farmer, in 1845. They had a number of children and then, in 1861, he filed for a divorce from her charging that she had abandoned him. Sirena's counter petition states that although they had lived "in perfect peace and harmony" for several years, he had then commenced "running after lascivious women and became very disagreeable in his family and would abuse the defendant and treat her with inhumanity."

Sirena goes on to name two of these women, Marinda Gray and Polly Pace, and then states that Nathan then "fell in love with one Manerva Hall and being desirous to take her to wife" he first tried to force her to leave their home and abandon him and that when she would not, he "removed his bed and board to one James G. Skidmore's, some three miles from their home."

At this point the case was apparently interrupted by the Civil War as most of the remaining charges and countercharges, particularly in regards to the marital property, are dated in 1865 when the divorce was granted, and in 1866, when the disposal of the property was under dispute.