Every time a supposed historian talks about how women had no rights in 19th century America, I wish the educated class of propagandists would just take a look at laws and court cases in the backward Southern and Western states.
What those propagandists mean is that in the states that mattered (the Northeast ones), women’s rights were quite limited. In most of the backward states, though, women had the same property rights as did men, could and did file for divorce, and often listed personal property before agreeing to marriage.
In Red River County Texas in 1866 occurred a case that encompasses all of the rights women are supposed not to have had. On Nov. 15, 1866, a man who had been gone from home in Confederate service, filed for divorce, claiming that while he was gone, his wife went to live with another man and had a child by that other man.
Showing legal and moral statements were hardly the province for men only, the wife filed six days later filed her own suit.
Reading papers in Sixth District Court records, one realizes neither Thomas J. nor his wife Hester Ann lacking in accusatory nature.
Thomas and Hester were married July 1, 1847. He claimed theirs was a good marriage, but Hester said different in her suit.
In 1863, Thomas answered the call, entering “the military service of the Confederate States and so continued serving said forces until the close of the existing war.” When Thomas returned home in spring 1865, he discovered a new addition to the household, Hester having delivered a baby that February.
Thomas claimed his investigation of the matter showed that “while your petitioner was serving with his command on the Rio Grande in this state,” Hester “committed and was taken in the act of adultery with (a named man).” And, Thomas said, the affair “was kept up until the year 1865.”
Thomas also said he “has not admitted the said Hester to his conjugal society or embrace and … he has not carnally known any other woman since this marriage.”
Thomas asked for dissolution of the marriage, custody of his and Hester’s three children (ages 16, 14 and 8) and division of community property. Hester, he said, was “not a fit person to have control or education of said children.” He also said Hester “has separate property of the value of ten thousand dollars.” Their community property was less than that, he said.
In two pages, Thomas’s suit spells out his accusations; Hester’s Nov. 21, 1866, suit fills seven pages. Hester says she and Thomas were married “__ day of __ 1848.” Shortly afterward, she discovered Thomas possessed of “quarrelsome disposition.” As a good wife and “desiring to discharge her duties, (she) made every effort to overcome his violent disposition.”
“His whole nature seemed to be changed,” she claimed. “He became a tyrant.” Thomas also used abusive language toward Hester: “’You damned old bitch, you damned hellion,’ and other language too indecent and disrespectful to be written.”
In 1861, Hester claimed, Thomas left her “with several little children” and “encumbered with debts.” She discharged all the debts which came to her knowledge. Two years later, Thomas returned “and resumed his former treatment of her.”
Matters came to a head in 1866. That year, Hester said, her husband “attacked her person and threatened to murder her. She lives in dread of her life.”
In her petition, Hester lists community property of 500 acres, of which 30-40 acres were in cultivation; 13 horses; 50 head of cattle; 30 head of hogs; a small lot of household items and furniture; and farming implements, of a total value of $2,000. She asked for division of community property and custody of her three children by Thomas. She made no mention of her other child, nor of the $10,000 in personal property Thomas said she had.
In court records, Thomas’s suit never made the court docket, nor is there evidence that he dropped his suit.
Hester’s case came before the district judge on April 1, 1867. Court records say that “at the suggestion of the plaintiff’s attorney,” the case should be dismissed at Hester’s cost.
“It is ordered by the court,” records state, “that the Defendant have and recover of the Plaintiff all the costs in this behalf expended.”
So what happened? Did Hester and Thomas settle their dispute? Did they decide to go their separate ways without divorce? Did they decide division of 500 acres and livestock would leave both in reduced circumstances? Records do not say.
Showing posts with label red river county cases. Show all posts
Showing posts with label red river county cases. Show all posts
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Cleaning up after a murder
One night during TV crime drama, my wife asked, “Who cleans up all the blood when there’s a murder?” I said I didn’t know. She asked, “Do the police clean it up?” I doubt that, I said. She wondered, “So the family has to clean up all the blood? Or, maybe there are companies that do that.”
During coverage of a murder trail in Texas, I found out the answer.
A man killed his live-in girlfriend, in the kitchen of their house, with a 12-guage shotgun. He was known to have beaten her several times. She had left him, or thrown him from their house several times.
Her friends all told her, “Leave him. Make him go away. One of these days he will kill you.”
She responded with the usual “But he loves me” and “He promised to stop.” So, she always brought him back home.
In studying that kind of violence, my wife said she read that killing the abused person occurs after more than two or three forgivenesses.
That was what happened in this case.
The man had a defense, other than he was a worthless SOB.
On the night the murder happened, he said, he came home from hunting and had his shotgun in his hand when he went into the kitchen. His girlfriend, he said, started arguing about his absences. She had a butcher knife, he said, and at one point walked toward him, waving the knife. He said he had been stabbed several years before, and developed post-traumatic stress.
He shot his girlfriend in self-defense, he said. He shot her two times.
He was arrested, charged and indicted. His court-appointed attorney got a change of venue, from Clarksville, Texas, to Paris. Location of the trial did not matter. Everybody knew the man would receive a fair trial and a guilty verdict in any court in Texas. The trial took little more than an hour, the verdict substantially less time.
The mother of the dead woman’s son’s fiancé was a deputy sheriff in Red River County. She and her husband, the county constable, cleaned up the murder scene. The dead woman had no relatives, other than her son.
“We used more than two big rolls of paper towels,” the deputy later told me. “It was …” She just lapsed off and stopped talking.
During coverage of a murder trail in Texas, I found out the answer.
A man killed his live-in girlfriend, in the kitchen of their house, with a 12-guage shotgun. He was known to have beaten her several times. She had left him, or thrown him from their house several times.
Her friends all told her, “Leave him. Make him go away. One of these days he will kill you.”
She responded with the usual “But he loves me” and “He promised to stop.” So, she always brought him back home.
In studying that kind of violence, my wife said she read that killing the abused person occurs after more than two or three forgivenesses.
That was what happened in this case.
The man had a defense, other than he was a worthless SOB.
On the night the murder happened, he said, he came home from hunting and had his shotgun in his hand when he went into the kitchen. His girlfriend, he said, started arguing about his absences. She had a butcher knife, he said, and at one point walked toward him, waving the knife. He said he had been stabbed several years before, and developed post-traumatic stress.
He shot his girlfriend in self-defense, he said. He shot her two times.
He was arrested, charged and indicted. His court-appointed attorney got a change of venue, from Clarksville, Texas, to Paris. Location of the trial did not matter. Everybody knew the man would receive a fair trial and a guilty verdict in any court in Texas. The trial took little more than an hour, the verdict substantially less time.
The mother of the dead woman’s son’s fiancé was a deputy sheriff in Red River County. She and her husband, the county constable, cleaned up the murder scene. The dead woman had no relatives, other than her son.
“We used more than two big rolls of paper towels,” the deputy later told me. “It was …” She just lapsed off and stopped talking.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Prosecutorial misconduct, or a personal grudge?
On the afternoon of Election Day 1897, John Dreifort rode his mule from the southern part of Red River County to the sheriff’s office in Clarksville to report a crime.
Dreifort told Sheriff Daniel West and Chief Deputy J.D. Wilson he had witnessed a man and a young woman engaged in a carnal act just south of Cuthand Creek. He said he saw the pair in a buggy that crossed the creek on the new bridge. The man turned left on a connecting dirt road and then stopped when not far along the road. The man and the woman left the buggy and walked through a small clearing, Dreifort said. The woman leaned against a tree and the man stood against her and the two began fornicating, Dreifort said. He saw all that from 30 yards away, through the limbs and branches of a large oak tree that had fallen the night before during a long rain.
At some point, the woman saw Dreifort. She spoke to her companion. She rearranged her dress, Dreifort said, and she and the man returned to the buggy and drove away. The man, Dreifort said, was G.W. Stewart; the young woman was Ophelia Gray, Stewart’s step-daughter.
Next day, West and Wilson rode to Stewart’s farm and arrested him on a charge of incest. Stewart was arraigned in Clarksville. Within two days, prosecutor Thomas Stout convinced a grand jury to indict Stewart for incestual relations with his step-daughter. At Stout’s behest, the grand jury also indicted Ophelia Gray.
Records do not say, but you have to wonder: Upon what system of law did prosecutor Stout attain indictment against the young woman? If Ophelia was a minor (court records do not list her age), then she could not have committed incest. Stewart, not Ophelia, would have made that decision. And if Ophelia had attained majority, incest would not be the crime allegedly committed. The crimes would have been adultery, on Stewart’s part, and fornication for him and Ophelia.
Law does not always follow logic, though, especially law rendered by local authorities, so Stewart and Gray both found themselves in Sixth District Court within two weeks of their escapade near Cuthand Creek.
Then, prosecutor Stout sprang a surprise: He was dropping charges against Gray, if she would agree not to testify for the defense. She agreed, presumably at the suggestion of Stewart.
The trial took two days, from opening arguments to verdict. The prosecution produced witnesses who identified Stewart as owner of a farm in southeast Red River County, as arriving in Texas from North Carolina two years before, as married to Miriam Gray Stewart, and as step-father to Ophelia Gray. Other witnesses said they saw Stewart in Clarksville on Election Day, and that he and Ophelia arrived together in a buggy and left together in the same transport.
Dreifort testified in the same manner with which he gave his initial statement to Sheriff West and Deputy Wilson. He had witnessed the crime, he said, and Stewart had committed the crime.
Defense attorney A.J. Dumont challenged just about every witness, questioning especially if any had knowledge of a wedding between Stewart and Miriam Gray. None had, since the marriage presumably occurred in North Carolina. Witnesses also said Ophelia’s father was said to have gone to California several years before, leaving Miriam in North Carolina to raise their daughter.
Dumont’s arguments took this tenor: “All you people say my client is married to the young woman’s mother. … Prove it. Show me a marriage license. Somebody bring to this courtroom a legal document proving the marriage of G.W. Stewart to Miriam Gray. Prove such a marriage exists. Prove it!”
Dumont’s arguments failed to convince members of the jury. After only a short deliberation, the jury found G.W. Stewart guilty of the crime of incest.
Dumont appealed, of course, and in 1902, five years later, the state appeals court in Tyler said in effect to the county prosecutor: “You better try this case again.”
Stout declined. Instead, he recommended the state drop charges against Stewart.
You have to wonder, why did the prosecutor take the case to trial? Did he have a personal grudge against Stewart? Court records do not reveal an answer.
(This was an actual case tried in Sixth District Court in 1897. Names have been changed.)
Dreifort told Sheriff Daniel West and Chief Deputy J.D. Wilson he had witnessed a man and a young woman engaged in a carnal act just south of Cuthand Creek. He said he saw the pair in a buggy that crossed the creek on the new bridge. The man turned left on a connecting dirt road and then stopped when not far along the road. The man and the woman left the buggy and walked through a small clearing, Dreifort said. The woman leaned against a tree and the man stood against her and the two began fornicating, Dreifort said. He saw all that from 30 yards away, through the limbs and branches of a large oak tree that had fallen the night before during a long rain.
At some point, the woman saw Dreifort. She spoke to her companion. She rearranged her dress, Dreifort said, and she and the man returned to the buggy and drove away. The man, Dreifort said, was G.W. Stewart; the young woman was Ophelia Gray, Stewart’s step-daughter.
Next day, West and Wilson rode to Stewart’s farm and arrested him on a charge of incest. Stewart was arraigned in Clarksville. Within two days, prosecutor Thomas Stout convinced a grand jury to indict Stewart for incestual relations with his step-daughter. At Stout’s behest, the grand jury also indicted Ophelia Gray.
Records do not say, but you have to wonder: Upon what system of law did prosecutor Stout attain indictment against the young woman? If Ophelia was a minor (court records do not list her age), then she could not have committed incest. Stewart, not Ophelia, would have made that decision. And if Ophelia had attained majority, incest would not be the crime allegedly committed. The crimes would have been adultery, on Stewart’s part, and fornication for him and Ophelia.
Law does not always follow logic, though, especially law rendered by local authorities, so Stewart and Gray both found themselves in Sixth District Court within two weeks of their escapade near Cuthand Creek.
Then, prosecutor Stout sprang a surprise: He was dropping charges against Gray, if she would agree not to testify for the defense. She agreed, presumably at the suggestion of Stewart.
The trial took two days, from opening arguments to verdict. The prosecution produced witnesses who identified Stewart as owner of a farm in southeast Red River County, as arriving in Texas from North Carolina two years before, as married to Miriam Gray Stewart, and as step-father to Ophelia Gray. Other witnesses said they saw Stewart in Clarksville on Election Day, and that he and Ophelia arrived together in a buggy and left together in the same transport.
Dreifort testified in the same manner with which he gave his initial statement to Sheriff West and Deputy Wilson. He had witnessed the crime, he said, and Stewart had committed the crime.
Defense attorney A.J. Dumont challenged just about every witness, questioning especially if any had knowledge of a wedding between Stewart and Miriam Gray. None had, since the marriage presumably occurred in North Carolina. Witnesses also said Ophelia’s father was said to have gone to California several years before, leaving Miriam in North Carolina to raise their daughter.
Dumont’s arguments took this tenor: “All you people say my client is married to the young woman’s mother. … Prove it. Show me a marriage license. Somebody bring to this courtroom a legal document proving the marriage of G.W. Stewart to Miriam Gray. Prove such a marriage exists. Prove it!”
Dumont’s arguments failed to convince members of the jury. After only a short deliberation, the jury found G.W. Stewart guilty of the crime of incest.
Dumont appealed, of course, and in 1902, five years later, the state appeals court in Tyler said in effect to the county prosecutor: “You better try this case again.”
Stout declined. Instead, he recommended the state drop charges against Stewart.
You have to wonder, why did the prosecutor take the case to trial? Did he have a personal grudge against Stewart? Court records do not reveal an answer.
(This was an actual case tried in Sixth District Court in 1897. Names have been changed.)
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