To the Honorable James Pitot, Judge of the Parish Court of the Parish and City of New Orleans the petition of David Kookernot residing in said city respectfully sheweth:

That on the 30th day of May 1829 at the City of New Orleans your petitioner married Caroline Ditmare also residing in said City. Your petitioner shews that shortly afterwards the said Caroline abandoned his house with out any cause and never has returned.

Your petitioner further shews that the said Caroline has since committed adultery &  that he is desirous of being divorced from her on that account.

Wherefore your petitioner respectfully prays that the said Caroline may be cited to appear and answer this petition & after due proceedings judgment may be rendered dissolving the bonds of matrimony between them, and that she may be condemned to pay the costs of suit. As in duty bound etc,

D L Kokernot

Isaac T Preston atty for petnr

The petition was duly served upon Caroline, but there are no further papers in the case file (New Orleans City Archives, microfilm VCP290, #59, case 5190). Four days earlier David had joined the Revenue Cutter Service and probably spent most of his time on duty in the Gulf of Mexico. The suit went nowhere and the couple reconciled. The first of their nine children was born fourteen months after this date.

5790

Parish Court

David Kokernot vs. Caroline Ditmare

Preston Atty

Recd Oct 14th 1830 and served on the 15th copy of petition & citation on the defendant by leaving the same at her domicil at the corner of Camp and Suzette Streets with her mother Marguerit J. Marly.

Retd Novr 8th 1830, J. H. Holland, Dy Sheriff

It has long been assumed by Maley researchers that Juliana Maley, nee Mueller, married first Johannes (probably) Dittmar and bore their only child, Caroline, in 1815 just before Dittmar's death in war. She remarried George Maley, immigrated to Philadelphia, and bore two sons there before being widowed a second time en route to New Orleans in the late 1820s. No primary documents have been found to support those events, and nothing here contradicts any of it if we make the reasonable assumptions that "J" stands for "Juliana" and "Marly" is the sheriff's spelling for "Maley," which itself is probably an alternate spelling for something else. The given name "Marguerit" is new information.

Suzette Street no longer exists, having long ago been buried under the approaches to the Crescent City Connection, the prominent cantilever span across the Mississippi so visible today from the French Quarter. This address where Caroline went home to her mother during her marital difficulties was  only about four blocks from David and Caroline's address on Girod given a few months earlier for the 1830 census.