I feel like I've written any number of posts that might fall under this particular theme. When trying to describe the stories of Horace and Nettie to one of my students, he stared unbelievingly at me and said, "That is literally stranger than fiction." 😆 I can't say as I disagree with his assessment.
One phenomenon that I found particularly surprising when researching the Pearsons of Pulaski County was how common divorces actually were. Nowadays, people like to say "divorces didn't happen back then like they do today," but I am here to tell you that's not true.
Let's take my great great great grandmother, Ann (Echols) Green Pearson, for instance. In 1869, she divorced my great great great grandfather, Thomas Green. In Thomas's Civil War pension paperwork, there is an affidavit from Ann that reads, in part, "After he came from the army, he got to drinking pretty hard, and that is the reason we separated." A quick search on divorce laws in Illinois revealed that Illinois passed its first divorce laws in 1819 and that Abraham Lincoln frequently represented divorce litigants! Aside from the typical grounds for divorce (cruelty, adultery, and abandonment), habitual drunkenness was also considered an acceptable reason to file. It is interesting to note that, unlike other states, Illinois granted divorces to women and frequently awarded them custody of minor children. In the 1870 census, Ann listed her daughters, Emma Kate and Dora, as living with her. Thomas listed Dora as living with him, so it's uncertain what the custody agreement was.
Ann's case and reasoning seems fairly cut and dry, but let's take a look at her daughter, Emma Kate. Emma Kate, born in 1855, married her step-brother, John Winston Pearson, in 1874. Based on their children's birth places, it seems that John and Emma Kate went to Virginia at the beginning of their marriage (John's father was a native Virginian). By the mid-century, Virginia's divorce laws were becoming more liberal. Starting in 1853, grounds for absolute divorce in Virginia were "adultery, impotency, confinement in penitentiary, conviction of an infamous offense prior to marriage, willful desertion for five years, pregnancy of the wife at the time of the marriage by a person other than the husband, and a wife working as a prostitute prior to marriage without the knowledge of the husband." Like Illinois, Virginia also granted divorces to women. Still, my guess is that when John and Emma Kate decided to divorce, they returned to Illinois. At any rate, by 1883, both of them had remarried - Emma Kate to my great great grandfather (and John's cousin) George William Pearson, and John to Zana Coble. Again, it is uncertain what the custody arrangement was. In the 1900 census, William and Rosa Pearson (John's children) are listed as living with Emma Kate. However, another 1900 census lists William as living with John Winston.
And then, of course, we have Emma Kate's youngest daughter, Nettie, for whom divorce seemed to be a hobby. No documents exist (that I have found) for her first two marriages, but as her first two husbands were from Illinois, I imagine divorces were procured there - most likely in 1915 and late 1917/early 1918. She also maintained custody of the son she had with her first husband. Nettie's next two marriages were dissolved in the state of Michigan. Both times, her husbands charged her with cruelty. Walter Miller divorced her in 1933, and Walter Reed divorced her in 1939. She next married a man by the name of Johnson, and while I haven't found definitive proof, all signs point to another Michigan divorce before 1950.
So, we have three generations of women, living from 1839-1968. Between the three of them, they were divorced a total of seven times.
Sources:
"The History of No-Fault Divorce in Illinois," Nottage and Ward, 17 Apr. 2020, www.nottageandward.com/blog/divorce/the-history-of-no-fault-divorce-in-illinois/. Accessed 15 Dec. 2023.
Riley, Glenda. "Legislative Divorce in Virginia, 1803-1850," Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 11, no. 1, 1991, pp. 51-67, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3123311. Accessed 15 Dec. 2023.
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