Laura Byars sues for Damages for Seduction

Breaking news – well sort of. Today I found several articles on ancestry. com from 1880 telling the tale of my 3x great grandmother suing the father of her son, my 2x great grandfather for “seduction”. This is a follow up to my previous post https://themroots.com/desperately-seeking-sam-myers/

In Vincennes Indiana on March 19, 1880 Laura filed a complaint against Samuel Thompson Jr of Washington township, Vigo County Indiana with being the parent of her unborn baby. She also filed a lawsuit asking for 3 thousand dollars for the care of her baby. Laura said she was working at the house of Samuel Thompson as a domestic from September 1878 to September of 1879. She said the first month she was there Samuel Thompson “did seduce and have carnal and illicit sexual knowledge of plaintiff which continued at frequent intervals until September of 1879”. In July of 1879 she “become in a condition decidedly out of keeping with an unmarried female’s virtue.” In 1878, when the affair began she would have been 16 years old. She had been orphaned in 1873 and on her own since she was 12 years old.

The next article on the pre trial hearing is dated Friday April 9th, 1880. Laura testified before a large crowd that Samuel Thompson’s were persistent and that he assured her he was “too sharp” to get her in trouble. She testified she had never been in a sexual relationship with another man. Samuel testified he hadn’t had sex with Laura. A girl who lived with a Thompson family member testified that Laura had told her another man, Hiram Mallory, had promised to marry her and backed out on that and another man testified he had seen Laura kissing Hiram Mallory. The trial was then postponed so they could gather witnesses to refute this charge to Hiram Mallory.

On Friday, April 16th, 1880 there was a follow up article. Hiram Mallory testified that had never had sex with Laura, though he had lied to others that he had. At the conclusion of the pre trial hearing Samuel Thompson was held on $500 dollars bail with a trial to come.

On October 15, 1880 a small article titled “Found Its Papa” reported the “bastardly suit of Miss Laura Belle Byers vs Samuel Thompson, jr…was tried last Saturday. The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff, declaring that the defendant was the father of the child in question” (my GGGF Sam). The amount of money hadn’t yet been fixed.

Finally on October 29th the last article reports the judgement for $400 for the maintenance of the child awarded to Laura.

Laura had originally sued for $3,000 and received $400. $400 in 1880 would be equivalent to $12,668.55 today. It took amazing courage for a girl of barely 18 to take on a 30 year old man from a well respected family in the community. At the time of the trial Laura was working as a domestic servant in Palmyra, about an hour from the Thompson farm. Three years later she married widower William Myers and they had six children together. William died in 1896. In 1897 She married George Swick and they had three more children. When their youngest, Noble was two she was granted a divorce from George. 8 years later, in 1910 at the age of 48 she married David Qualls. They lived in Bicknell, Indiana. She died in Indianapolis in 1928 at the age of 66. She outlived her son Sam, who died in 1926 and Sam’s dad Samuel Thompson who died in 1927.