Women and the Law of Property in Early America

Women and the Law of Property in Early America PDF Author: Marylynn Salmon
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469620448
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
In this first comprehensive study of women's property rights in early America, Marylynn Salmon discusses the effect of formal rules of law on women's lives. By focusing on such areas such as conveyancing, contracts, divorce, separate estates, and widows' provisions, Salmon presents a full picture of women's legal rights from 1750 to 1830. Salmon shows that the law assumes women would remain dependent and subservient after marriage. She documents the legal rights of women prior to the Revolution and traces a gradual but steady extension of the ability of wives to own and control property during the decades following the Revolution. The forces of change in colonial and early national law were various, but Salmon believes ideological considerations were just as important as economic ones. Women did not all fare equally under the law. In this illuminating survey of the jurisdictions of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, Salmon shows regional variations in the law that affected women's autonomous control over property. She demonstrates the importance of understanding the effects of formal law on women' s lives in order to analyze the wider social context of women's experience.

Women and the Law of Property in Early America

Women and the Law of Property in Early America PDF Author: Marylynn Salmon
Publisher: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Women and the Law of Property in Early America

A Companion to American Women's History

A Companion to American Women's History PDF Author: Nancy A. Hewitt
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 047099858X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
This collection of twenty-four original essays by leading scholars in American women's history highlights the most recent important scholarship on the key debates and future directions of this popular and contemporary field. Covers the breadth of American Women's history, including the colonial family, marriage, health, sexuality, education, immigration, work, consumer culture, and feminism. Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic. Includes expanded bibliography of titles to guide further research.

Women Before the Court

Women Before the Court PDF Author: Lindsay R. Moore
Publisher: Gender in History
ISBN: 9781526151711
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This book offers an innovative, comparative approach to the study of women's legal rights during a formative period of Anglo-American history. It traces how colonists transplanted English legal institutions to America, examines the remarkable depth of women's legal knowledge and shows how the law increasingly undermined patriarchal relationships between parents and children, masters and servants, husbands and wives. The book will be of interest to scholars of Britain and colonial America, and to laypeople interested in how women in the past navigated and negotiated the structures of authority that governed them. It is packed with fascinating stories that women related to the courts in cases ranging from murder and abuse to debt and estate litigation. Ultimately, it makes a remarkable contribution to our understandings of law, power and gender in the early modern world.

Married Women and the Law

Married Women and the Law PDF Author: Tim Stretton
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773590145
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Explaining the curious legal doctrine of "coverture," William Blackstone famously declared that "by marriage, husband and wife are one person at law." This "covering" of a wife's legal identity by her husband meant that the greatest subordination of women to men developed within marriage. In England and its colonies, generations of judges, legislators, and husbands invoked coverture to limit married women's rights and property, but there was no monolithic concept of coverture and their justifications shifted to fit changing times: Were husband and wife lord and subject? Master and servant? Guardian and ward? Or one person at law? The essays in Married Women and the Law offer new insights into the legal effects of marriage for women from medieval to modern times. Focusing on the years prior to the passage of the Divorce Acts and Married Women's Property Acts in the late nineteenth century, contributors examine a variety of jurisdictions in the common law world, from civil courts to ecclesiastical and criminal courts. By bringing together studies of several common law jurisdictions over a span of centuries, they show how similar legal rules persisted and developed in different environments. This volume reveals not only legal changes and the women who creatively used or subverted coverture, but also astonishing continuities. Accessibly written and coherently presented, Married Women and the Law is an important look at the persistence of one of the longest lived ideas in British legal history. Contributors include Sara M. Butler (Loyola), Marisha Caswell (Queen’s), Mary Beth Combs (Fordham), Angela Fernandez (Toronto), Margaret Hunt (Amherst), Kim Kippen (Toronto), Natasha Korda (Wesleyan), Lindsay Moore (Boston), Barbara J. Todd (Toronto), and Danaya C. Wright (Florida).

Women, Property, and the Letters of the Law in Early Modern England

Women, Property, and the Letters of the Law in Early Modern England PDF Author: Margaret W. Ferguson
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802087577
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Women, Property, and the Letters of the Law in Early Modern England turns to these points of departure for the study of women's legal status and property relationships in the early modern period.

Women and the Law of Property in Early America

Women and the Law of Property in Early America PDF Author: Marylynn Salmon
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469620448
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
In this first comprehensive study of women's property rights in early America, Marylynn Salmon discusses the effect of formal rules of law on women's lives. By focusing on such areas such as conveyancing, contracts, divorce, separate estates, and widows' provisions, Salmon presents a full picture of women's legal rights from 1750 to 1830. Salmon shows that the law assumes women would remain dependent and subservient after marriage. She documents the legal rights of women prior to the Revolution and traces a gradual but steady extension of the ability of wives to own and control property during the decades following the Revolution. The forces of change in colonial and early national law were various, but Salmon believes ideological considerations were just as important as economic ones. Women did not all fare equally under the law. In this illuminating survey of the jurisdictions of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, Salmon shows regional variations in the law that affected women's autonomous control over property. She demonstrates the importance of understanding the effects of formal law on women' s lives in order to analyze the wider social context of women's experience.

Revolutionary Backlash

Revolutionary Backlash PDF Author: Rosemarie Zagarri
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812205553
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
The Seneca Falls Convention is typically seen as the beginning of the first women's rights movement in the United States. Revolutionary Backlash argues otherwise. According to Rosemarie Zagarri, the debate over women's rights began not in the decades prior to 1848 but during the American Revolution itself. Integrating the approaches of women's historians and political historians, this book explores changes in women's status that occurred from the time of the American Revolution until the election of Andrew Jackson. Although the period after the Revolution produced no collective movement for women's rights, women built on precedents established during the Revolution and gained an informal foothold in party politics and male electoral activities. Federalists and Jeffersonians vied for women's allegiance and sought their support in times of national crisis. Women, in turn, attended rallies, organized political activities, and voiced their opinions on the issues of the day. After the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a widespread debate about the nature of women's rights ensued. The state of New Jersey attempted a bold experiment: for a brief time, women there voted on the same terms as men. Yet as Rosemarie Zagarri argues in Revolutionary Backlash, this opening for women soon closed. By 1828, women's politicization was seen more as a liability than as a strength, contributing to a divisive political climate that repeatedly brought the country to the brink of civil war. The increasing sophistication of party organizations and triumph of universal suffrage for white males marginalized those who could not vote, especially women. Yet all was not lost. Women had already begun to participate in charitable movements, benevolent societies, and social reform organizations. Through these organizations, women found another way to practice politics.

Until They are Seven

Until They are Seven PDF Author: John Wroath
Publisher: Waterside Press
ISBN: 9781872870571
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
An absorbing account of the origins of women's rights to property and children in the UK. A true story which reads like a Victorian novel. 'In law a husband and wife are one: and that one is the husband': Blackstone This was the law until well into the nineteenth century. Until They Are Seven is based on research into the historical background to the modern problems of child custody and access. The result is an absorbing tale of the origins of women's rights to their children and their property in which John Wroath recounts the brave moves by Henrietta Greenhill and Caroline Norton which led to the Infant Custody Act 1839 and Matrimonial Causes Act 1857-the rest being history. The story is also fascinating for the insights it gives into the private lives of several famous people of the time who were involved in or around these events-included among them the prime minister Lord Melbourne, the poet and playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.

Rebels at the Bar

Rebels at the Bar PDF Author: Jill Norgren
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479835528
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
In Rebels at the Bar, prize-winning legal historian Jill Norgren recounts the life stories of a small group of nineteenth century women who were among the first female attorneys in the United States. Beginning in the late 1860s, these determined rebels pursued the radical ambition of entering the then all-male profession of law. They were motivated by a love of learning. They believed in fair play and equal opportunity. They desired recognition as professionals and the ability to earn a good living. Rebels at the Bar expands our understanding of both women's rights and the history of the legal profession in the nineteenth century. It focuses on the female renegades who trained in law and then, like men, fought considerable odds to create successful professional lives. In this engaging and beautifully written book, Norgren shares her subjects' faith in the art of the possible. In so doing, she ensures their place in history.

They Were Her Property

They Were Her Property PDF Author: Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300251831
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History A bold and searing investigation into the role of white women in the American slave economy “Compelling.”—Renee Graham, Boston Globe “Stunning.”—Rebecca Onion, Slate “Makes a vital contribution to our understanding of our past and present.”—Parul Sehgal, New York Times Bridging women’s history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave‑owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South’s slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves than land, enslaved people were often their primary source of wealth. Not only did white women often refuse to cede ownership of their slaves to their husbands, they employed management techniques that were as effective and brutal as those used by slave‑owning men. White women actively participated in the slave market, profited from it, and used it for economic and social empowerment. By examining the economically entangled lives of enslaved people and slave‑owning women, Jones-Rogers presents a narrative that forces us to rethink the economics and social conventions of slaveholding America.