Scope
As settlers flocked to the new territory and established new urban centers, the popularity of handwritten and printed petitions swelled. At the time, petitions were the only direct means for citizens to communicate with the government. Petition topics changed in response to local and statewide political, social, and economic developments. Concerns with national issues such as temperance, suffrage, civil rights, and education reform remained constant through the majority of the century.
This website focuses on petitions for divorce. Throughout this period of intense socioeconomic and political change, urban communities took steps to legislate marital conduct and formalize family law legal processes. Husbands and wives did not hesitate to petition the legislature for divorces over all manners of improper conduct, including spousal abandonment, intemperance, adultery, and abuse. The petitions I have selected are ones that display both the quotidia—petitions and affidavits from disgruntled spouses citing abandonment, failure to pay child support, abuse, and permanent separation— and the situations that raised eyebrows all around— a husband divorcing a wife caught in flagrante delicto, a woman divorcing a husband who lied about his fortune and another her husband for contracting an STI when they had not been sexually active for a year, and a pair of spouses whose mutual detestation was so renowned that the community petitioned for divorce on their behalf.
Not everyone's voice is represented in the legal documentation of divorce. Black women do not pen any of the documents in WHS' collection of petitions, remonstrances, and resolutions, and Black men author only several petitions, none of which pertain to marriage. The vast majority of petitions are submitted by white spouses, though there is not particular gender disparity in this body of material. The single divorce petition authored by an Indigenous woman (a woman of Chippewa descent) is included in this site's small collection under her husband's name: "Petition of Joseph R. Brown asking for a divorce."