Please notice that I AM NOT INCLUDING ALL THE PREVIOUS MESSAGES in this
reply. Please recall my request that we none of us clog up Va-Roots with
needless repetitions.

In spite of a few colonial county court proceedings that granted persons
a request to break up a marriage, it is doubtful that any other court
would have rearded those as legal divorces. They were what we would now
call legal separations, and neither party was legally permitted to marry
again during the lifetime of the other. In spite of the legalities,
people have often found ways around them, and the example mentioned of
colonial people marrying again is not unique. It would also not have
been upheld by the General Court in Jamestown or Williamsburg or by any
court in London.

I suggest that people who have not read Harold's Gill's article and
Thomas E. Buckley's Great Catastrophe of My Life probably do not know
enough about the legalities in Virginia or the common practices of
people to speak knowledgeably on this topic.

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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