Marriage and Divorce in the Antebellum South

Question

I'm working on the profile of a man, John Cooper Stedman,  who died intestate in 1833. His probate file is 94 pages long, filled with petitions in courts in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and North Carolina. His oldest daughter, Margaret Ann, born in 1825, married a man in Alabama named William P. Givhan, according to the court papers. But, by 1855 she was referred to as deceased in the records.

Here's my question. William P. was married three times. His first wife was Margaret, the woman mentioned in the probate record. Based on court documents, I can infer that she was gone from the household by 1840, likely because she married William.

But William married another woman in 1843, based on Alabama marriage records. That woman died in 1849. (William was apparently hard on women.)

Dated 15th of March, 1855, court papers refer to Margaret as "Margaret Ann wife of Wm. P. Givhan" but later state "Margaret Ann wife of Wm. P. Givhan is dead without children living".

Is it safe to infer that she died before he married his second wife? Or is that too much speculation?

What were the customs in those days? Was divorce even available? If so, was it rare? Or common?

It seems strange to refer, in court papers, to Margaret as "wife of Wm. P. Givhan" when, by the time of those records, he was married to his THIRD wife, his second having died in 1849.

Here are some links so you know what I'm talking about:

William Phillip Givhan - https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LLCN-2FV

John Cooper Stedman - https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/GDM9-RKR

John's probate record - https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K78C-4ZC?from=lynx1UIV8&treeref=GDM9-RKR

None of this exists on Wikitree, so I'll put his father's profile in the box below.

Answer 1

Divorce was rare.  Men (occasionally women) seem to have just abandoned their families in lieu of going to court, but those folks usually are found to have moved some place else before they remarried (somebody local might have noticed and objected otherwise).  The fact that William seems to have married twice in Alabama makes it a lot more likely that Margaret died before he remarried.

Comments

Thank you.

Answer 2

You also have to remember the unfavorable legal environment, particularly for women that might want a divorce.

Here's a really interesting discussion of divorce in South Carolina, both prior to and after the Civil War - https://www.legalgenealogist.com/2018/07/10/divorce-palmetto-style/.  It makes the point that during the nineteenth century divorce was only permitted from 1868 to 1878.

Comments

Thank you for the link.