Virginia Memory, Library of Virginia
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THIS DAY IN VIRGINIA HISTORY

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April 06, 1691

Virginia (Colony), Colonial Papers, Petition, 6 April 1691, Folder 8, No. 17, Record Group 1, Accession 36138, State Government Records Collection, Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia. Virginia (Colony), Colonial Papers, Petition, 6 April 1691, Folder 8, No. 17, Record Group 1, Accession 36138, State Government Records Collection, Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.

Lt. Governor Nicholson Ordered John Fulcher to Pay Maintenance

The Lower Norfolk County clerk made this transcription of a petition from Ruth Fulcher to Lieutenant Governor Francis Nicholson (1655–1728), the order of Nicholson and the General Court referring the matter to the county court, and the later order of the Lower Norfolk County Court. Fulcher requested that the court order her husband, from whom she was estranged, to support her and their son financially. In seventeenth-century Virginia, women rarely were granted legal separation from their husbands and even more rarely were chosen as their children's legal guardians over male relatives. Nicholson ordered that the child remain with his mother, and the court ordered John Fulcher to pay his wife two thousand pounds of tobacco annually.