A Reputation on Trial: Delilah Pickens Morehead and the Fight for Her Good Name

Slander Case: Alexander and Delilah Morehead v. Jonathan and Sarah Norris

Purpose Statement: Here is a court case that reminds me why I do this work…to learn not only who my ancestors were, but what their lives were like in the moments that never make it into charts or written histories.

Fairfield County, Ohio, 1831–1832

The gossip spreads

In the fall of 1831, Alexander and Delilah Morehead filed a slander lawsuit in the Fairfield County Court of Common Pleas against Jonathan Norris and his wife Sarah. Their attorneys, Ewing and Stanberry, requested that the court summon the Norrises to appear and answer the claim. The sheriff personally served Jonathan and Sarah Norris with the summons on October 10, 1831, and the case was held over to the next term.

Delilah hears of the gossip

Later that year, on November 28, 1831, the Morehead's attorneys filed a formal written declaration explaining the basis of their case. In that document, they stated that Delilah was a woman of good reputation and moral character, known among her neighbors as chaste, decent, and respectable. They asserted that before the slander occurred, Delilah had never been suspected of immoral behavior of any kind.

The declaration then described the actions attributed to Sarah Norris. According to the complaint, Sarah made false and malicious statements about Delilah in the presence of others. These statements took an incident involving the men at a public house and used it to attack Delilah’s personal character. Sarah was accused of telling others that Delilah had an immoral sexual reputation and of calling her a prostitute. The complaint stated that these accusations harmed Delilah’s good name, caused her public embarrassment, and damaged her standing among neighbors and respectable citizens of Fairfield County. The Moreheads sought one thousand dollars in damages for the injury done to Delilah’s reputation.

Waiting for the verdict

On March 12, 1832, Jonathan and Sarah Norris appeared in court through their attorneys, Irwin and Stanberry, and formally denied all of the accusations. They entered a plea of not guilty and requested a jury trial.

Both parties appeared in court that same day, and a twelve-man jury was selected 

The Jury deliberates

and sworn. After hearing the case, the jury found Jonathan and Sarah Norris guilty of slander in the manner described in the Moreheads’ written declaration. They awarded Alexander and Delilah Morehead forty-five dollars in damages. The court entered judgment in favor of the Moreheads for that amount, along with court costs totaling twenty-eight dollars and thirty-seven and one-half cents.

The judgment was certified by Judge Frederick Grimke, who presided over the case. 

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Even though this slander case took place nearly two centuries ago, reading it today adds a dimension I don’t always expect when I’m deep in old court books. Sometimes following an ancestor’s trail takes you through dusty corners of history—unopened records, stalled leads, and plenty of dry figures on faded pages. But then something like this surfaces, and suddenly the people behind the documents come into focus.

It’s a reminder that gossip has always carried the power to wound. Delilah’s reputation mattered in her community, just as ours matter today, and the Moreheads’ willingness to take the matter to court shows how deeply words can cut when they are repeated, twisted, or spoken in the wrong company.

For me as a researcher, moments like this bring depth and color to the family story. They offer a glimpse into personality, conflict, fear, and resilience…things that rarely appear in a census column or probate inventory. It also underscores how early-nineteenth-century life was far from quiet or predictable; communities were close-knit, reputations were fragile, and a single rumor could echo far beyond the moment it was spoken.

Learning this about Alexander and Delilah helps me see them not just as research subjects, but as real people who struggled, defended themselves, and tried to maintain dignity when publicly misrepresented. And in a way, discoveries like this keep the work from ever feeling dry.

Sources

Fairfield County, Ohio. Court of Common Pleas. Court records, 1831 to 1833. Slander case: Alexander Morehead and Delila his wife vs. Jonathan Norris and Sarah his wife. Pages 38 to 39. FamilySearch. “Fairfield, Ohio, United States records,” image group 115937731. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHJ-57MX-B48S (accessed 26 November 2025).

Fairfield County, Ohio. Court of Common Pleas. Court records, 1831 to 1833. Second docket reference to the same slander case. FamilySearch. “Fairfield, Ohio, United States records,” image group 007758618. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C911-QZ24 (accessed 26 November 2025).

Fairfield County, Ohio. Court of Common Pleas. Clerk’s office and summons entries relating to Alexander and Delila Morehead. FamilySearch. “Fairfield, Ohio, United States records,” image group 115937731. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHN-57MX-Y6QJ (accessed 27 November 2025).

All images in this post were created using AI based on historical themes and do not depict real people or actual scenes from the 1830s. They are included only to help readers visualize the setting and atmosphere of the documented events. These illustrations should not be interpreted as literal representations of Alexander and Delilah Morehead, Jonathan and Sarah Norris, or any other individuals involved in the historical record.

Where Faith Held a Colony Together: The Swedish Church on the Christina

Tracing my Peterson family’s beginnings in Delaware’s oldest surviving church

Reconstruction of Fort Christina, the Swedish settlement established in 1638 on the Christina River.
The church was later built on part of the old fort site.

When the Swedish settlers arrived along the Delaware River in the 1600s, they brought with them little more than their faith, their work ethic, and a determination to build a new community. Long before Wilmington became a city, these families raised a small stone church on the site of their first fort at Christina. That church, known today as Holy Trinity or Old Swedes Church, has stood for more than three centuries as both a house of worship and a witness to the passing generations.

Engraving of “Swede’s Church, Wilmington, Del.,” by John Sartain, in Elizabeth Montgomery, Reminiscences of Wilmington, in Familiar Village Tales, Ancient and New (Philadelphia: T.K. Collins Jr., 1872). Public domain, image restoration by Steve Peterson, 2025.

Elizabeth Montgomery, writing in Reminiscences of Wilmington, in Familiar Village Tales, Ancient and New (1872), tells how the early settlers from New Jersey would row their boats across the river on Sunday mornings, tying them to the tree roots along the Christina shore before going inside for worship. The simple act of pulling up their boats and gathering under one roof became a weekly ritual of faith and fellowship. For a people far from their homeland, this church was not just a place to pray, it was a lifeline to identity and community.

Illustration of Swedish settlers arriving by boat to attend services at Old Swedes Church, based on accounts from Elizabeth Montgomery, Reminiscences of Wilmington (1872). Artistic reconstruction, 2025. Public domain for research and illustrative purposes.

For genealogists, this little stone church remains one of the most valuable sources for tracing families in the region. Before Delaware kept consistent civil records, the church’s baptism, marriage, and burial entries were the only written proof that a person had lived, loved, and died there. In these pages, faith and recordkeeping merged, preserving family ties long after paper and ink should have faded.

Among those early entries are the names of John Peterson and Ruth Pyles, who were married at Old Swedes on July 9, 1773. A year later, their son Robert Peterson was born January 28, 1774, and baptized there on November 11, 1774. The handwriting is simple and clear—“Robert Son of John & Ruth Peterson born Janry 28th baptizd Novr 11th 1774.” That single line quietly links one Delaware family to a story stretching back to the first Swedish pioneers who built the church nearly a century before.

The original church record for Robert’s baptism reads, “Robert Son of John & Ruth Peterson born Janry 28th
baptizd Novr 11th 1774.” (Records of Holy Trinity [Old Swedes] Church, Wilmington, Delaware, 1697–1773.)

Today, the church still stands near the original site of Fort Christina, where the first Swedish settlers landed in 1638. Its stone walls, hewn from local blue granite, have outlasted every generation that once filled its pews. The river no longer runs as close as it did in their time, industrial growth and land reclamation have reshaped the shoreline, but in 1774, the Peterson family would have found themselves only steps from the water’s edge.

“Map of Wilmington as of 1772, with the addition of original tracts, Indian trails, and land marks,” Delaware Public Archives. Public domain. The letter “A” marks the Swedish Church (Old Swedes) south of the Christina Creek.

To walk through the churchyard today is to move through time, to stand where boats once tied to trees and where voices once rose in hymns of gratitude. For those of us tracing our roots, the Old Swedes Church reminds us that faith and recordkeeping often worked hand in hand to preserve what civil institutions had not yet begun to keep: the record of a life.

Primary and Historical References

• Montgomery, Elizabeth. Reminiscences of Wilmington, in Familiar Village Tales, Ancient and New. Philadelphia: T.K. Collins Jr., 1872. Public domain. Available online: Archive.org

• Holy Trinity (Old Swedes) Church Records. Records of Holy Trinity (Old Swedes) Church, Wilmington, Del., from 1697 to 1773. Translated from the Original Swedish by Horace Burr. Wilmington: Historical Society of Delaware, 1890. FamilySearch Film #004254887. Public domain.

• Map of Wilmington as of 1772. Delaware Public Archives. Public domain.
  (Marked “A. Swedish Church” for Holy Trinity, located south of Christina Creek.)
  Available via Delaware Public Archives – Historic Maps

• Christina Conservancy. “History of the Christina River.” Discover the Christina.
  https://www.christinaconservancy.org/discover-the-christina/christina-history/

• Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs. History of Fort Christina Park.
  https://history.delaware.gov/fort-christina/

• Records of Holy Trinity (Old Swedes) Church, Wilmington, Delaware, 1697–1773. Translated from the Original Swedish by Horace Burr. Wilmington: Historical Society of Delaware, 1890. Entry for Robert Peterson, born January 28, 1774, baptized November 11, 1774. FamilySearch Film #004254887. Public domain.

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Modern Interpretive and Genealogical References

• The Family History Guide. “The Value of Church Records in Family History.” The Family History Guide Blog.
  https://www.thefhguide.com/blog/the-value-of-church-records-in-family-history/

• MyHeritage Blog. “What Church Records Can Reveal About Your Ancestors’ Lives.” (June 2025).
  https://blog.myheritage.com/2025/06/what-church-records-can-reveal-about-your-ancestors-lives/

• Old Swedes Foundation. “History of Holy Trinity (Old Swedes) Church.”
  https://oldswedes.org/history/

Not My Grandmother!

When Deeds Tell the Real Story

Research Goal: One mystery kept bothering me: was the Elizabeth in Robert Peterson’s 1819 deed the same woman who once married John Christopher?

The hunt for early marriages in Salem County, New Jersey, is never simple. With the 1810 census missing and marriage records scarce, I am left piecing together my family through scattered bits of evidence, tax lists, wills, and the occasional surviving church record. Every clue feels valuable, but none ever seem to tell the whole story.

One of the most stubborn puzzles has been Robert Peterson, my ancestor who lived along Oldmans Creek in what was then Upper Penns Neck Township, Salem County. Robert first appears in local records at the turn of the 19th century, a shoemaker who purchased small parcels of land from familiar neighborhood names like Curry, Pyle, and Barnes.

He married Catherine Simpkins in 1801, and together they had three children: Dean, Ezekiel, and Martha. Their family was part of the tight-knit network of Simpkinses, Pyles, and Guests who lived near Sculltown (now Auburn). But sometime before 1809, Catherine died. A later guardianship petition confirms that Robert was left to care for their children alone.

Deed excerpts transcribed, analyzed, and interpreted by Steve Peterson, 2025.
All images from public domain sources (Salem County Clerk’s Office).

Then, in 1819, a deed appears showing Robert and his wife Elizabeth Peterson selling property, proof that he had remarried sometime after Catherine’s death. The problem was, no record of that marriage has been found.

The missing census offered no help, and Salem County’s marriage books for that decade are nearly silent. So who was Elizabeth?

One promising lead was a widow named Elizabeth Christopher. She lived close to Robert, her husband had died by 1809, and Robert Peterson had served as a witness to that husband’s will. The two families moved in the same circles along Oldmans Creek and were tied to many of the same surnames.

Everything seemed to line up. Same neighborhood. Same family connections. Same time frame. It felt like the perfect fit.

But as every researcher eventually learns, “seems to fit” isn’t proof.

When I began studying the Salem County deed books, the story changed. Over and over, I found this Elizabeth described clearly as the widow of John Christopher, deceased, selling land she had inherited, signing with her mark, and continuing to use her married name year after year. She never once appeared as a Peterson.

Meanwhile, in Robert Peterson’s own transactions from 1809 to 1819, his wife appears simply as Elizabeth Peterson, releasing her dower rights on land sales, but clearly a different person from the widow Christopher. Two women. Two distinct lives.

And then came the reward of all that digging: the deeds not only separated the two women but also revealed the widow’s maiden name, suggesting she belonged to a completely different branch of the Simpkins family.

Deed excerpts transcribed, analyzed, and interpreted by Steve Peterson, 2025.
All images from public domain sources (Salem County Clerk’s Office).

It felt like a sad victory, sad because it would have been so rewarding to have finally discovered my grandmother’s surname, but a victory because I no longer have to wonder about this Elizabeth. The record is clear. The mystery, at least for her, is solved.

Deed excerpts transcribed, analyzed, and interpreted by Steve Peterson, 2025.
All images from public domain sources (Salem County Clerk’s Office).

This experience reminded me that land records aren’t just about boundaries or acreage. They’re about identity. They record who people were, spouses, widows, heirs, or neighbors, and when used carefully, they can correct assumptions that have stood for generations.

And in this case, they corrected mine.

She was not my grandmother.

Sources

Primary Records

• Salem County, New Jersey, Deed Books. County Clerk’s Office, Salem, NJ. Various volumes, 1801–1832, documenting land transactions involving Robert Peterson, Elizabeth Peterson, and the widow Elizabeth Christopher. Public domain images.
  Specific references include:

  • Robert Peterson to Jonathan Guest, 20 March 1809; recorded 29 March 1809.

  • Elizabeth Christopher (widow of John Christopher) to Henry Guest, 31 March 1832.

  • Ephraim Batcheba Barnes to Robert Peterson, 14 April 1804; recorded 18 October 1804.

• Salem County Guardianship Records, 1809. Petition naming Robert Peterson as guardian of minor children Dean, Ezekiel, and Martha Peterson, following the death of Catherine Peterson (née Simpkins).

Secondary and Contextual Sources

• Salem County Historical Society. Early Families of Upper Penns Neck and Auburn. Salem, NJ. Background on Simpkins, Pyle, and Peterson families living near Oldmans Creek.

• New Jersey State Archives. Deeds and Wills Collection, Trenton, NJ. Reference for probate connections between the Christopher and Peterson families, 1800–1830.

• United States Census Records, 1800–1820. Salem County, New Jersey. Context for landownership and family enumeration where available.

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Image Credits

• Salem County, New Jersey Deeds. Digital images from original deed volumes, County Clerk’s Office, Salem, NJ. Public domain reproductions. (Images used to illustrate Robert Peterson’s transactions and the 1832 deed of widow Elizabeth Christopher.)

Mapping Robert Peterson’s Neighborhood: How 200-Year-Old Deeds Came to Life with AI

Sometimes, genealogy feels like time travel. A few lines of 200-year-old ink on an old deed can pull you straight into the world of your ancestors, the creeks they crossed, the roads they traveled, even the neighbors they waved to every morning.

That’s exactly what happened when I set out to map Robert Peterson’s neighborhood in early 19th-century Upper Penns Neck Township, now part of Pennsville, Salem County, New Jersey.

Robert Peterson was a cordwainer (shoemaker) who lived and worked near what was then called Sculltown, later renamed Auburn. Between 1799 and 1819, Peterson bought and sold several small tracts of land along the old Penns Neck Road and Pedricktown Road. The deeds mention his neighbors, the Christophers, the Pyles, and the Guests, and with a little patience (and a lot of compass bearings), those cryptic metes-and-bounds started to line up like puzzle pieces.

That’s when I decided to feed the data into an AI-assisted mapping tool to visualize exactly what the area might have looked like around 1805.

The result? A clean, historically styled “Map of Auburn, N.J.”, showing the small parcels where these early tradesmen lived side by side, Robert Peterson the shoemaker, Andrew Pyle the weaver, Ephraim Barnes the carpenter, and John Christopher the neighbor whose land would one day tie the whole story together. (Note: Please see comment at the end regarding the accuracy of this map.)

About This Map
This map was created using AI-assisted visualization tools to help illustrate how the area may have appeared based on historical deed descriptions, compass bearings, and neighboring landowners. It is an interpretive aid, not an exact survey or substitute for primary source data. All property lines and placements were reconstructed from original Salem County deed books and survey records, with AI used only to visualize the spatial relationships described in those records

The Deed Data Behind the Map

Below is the data that formed the backbone of the map. Each line was pulled directly from the original Salem County deeds, carefully interpreted to preserve bearings, chains, and links, the surveyor’s language of the early 1800s.

Deed summaries adapted from original Salem County deed books, 1799–1809.
Transcriptions and coordinate plotting by Steve Peterson, 2025.

What the Map Reveals

When you stack these deeds together, they form a tight cluster of smallholdings, all fronting the main road and linking to the same set of neighbors. This little cluster was the heart of Sculltown around 1800–1810.

It wasn’t a big town, more like a handful of homesteads where tradesmen worked out of their homes. Shoemaking, weaving, carpentry, and blacksmithing supported nearby farms and travelers heading to Salem or Pedricktown.

Robert Peterson’s shop, for example, almost certainly stood right on the roadside, a modest wooden home with a small “Cordwainer” sign hanging by the door.

Technology Meets Tradition

The AI-generated map helped visualize what early surveyors saw in their minds:

• Roads forming the framework of community life
• Neighbors grouped by trade and kinship
• The old metes-and-bounds giving modern readers a window into how those people lived

But every shape on the map started with you guessed it, dusty handwritten deeds.

Note on the Accuracy of the Map

The map shown above is a creative reconstruction, not an exact survey. It was designed to visualize how Robert Peterson’s neighborhood might have looked based on available deed descriptions and compass bearings. Every tract, direction, and boundary line is drawn from real data, but early 19th-century deeds often contain approximations and variations that make precise modern plotting impossible.

This map should therefore be viewed as one possible interpretation of the Sculltown (Auburn) landscape, meant to help readers understand relationships among landowners and roads. It is not a definitive or legally accurate survey. The true boundaries likely differed in small but important ways from what we can reconstruct today.

In other words, it’s a tool for storytelling and context, an educated visualization of a real place that has changed shape many times over two centuries.

Sources

Primary and Historical References

·        Salem County, New Jersey, Deed Records. County Clerk’s Office, Salem, NJ. Volumes from 1799–1819 referencing land transfers to and from Robert Peterson, Ephraim Batcheba Barnes, Andrew Pyle, and John & Elizabeth Christopher. (Deeds abstracted and plotted for Upper Penns Neck Township/Auburn neighborhood reconstruction.)

·        Map of Salem County, New Jersey. New Jersey State Archives, Trenton, NJ. Historic plats and surveys consulted for road and property alignment in Upper Penns Neck Township (early 1800s).

·        United States Bureau of Land Management. General Land Office Records (search for New Jersey, Salem County). Public domain materials.

Secondary and Contextual Sources

·        Salem County Historical Society. History of Penns Neck and the Village of Auburn. Salem, NJ. Summary of early landowners, industries, and 19th-century settlement patterns.

·        Delaware Public Archives. Map of Wilmington as of 1772. Used for comparative study of neighboring Swedish settlement patterns. Public domain.

·        Christina Conservancy. “History of the Christina River.” https://www.christinaconservancy.org/discover-the-christina/christina-history/

Image Credits

·        Map of Auburn, N.J. (1799–1818). Created by Steve Peterson in collaboration with ChatGPT (OpenAI), 2025. Based on deed data from Salem County, NJ. Public domain image for research and educational use.

·        Robert Peterson’s Shoemaker Shop, Sculltown (Upper Penns Neck, N.J.). Digital historical reconstruction by Steve Peterson with ChatGPT (OpenAI), 2025.

·        Fort Christina (Artist’s Reconstruction). 2025. Created by Steve Peterson with ChatGPT (OpenAI), based on historical and archaeological reports. Public domain image.