Women's Property RightsBy Connie LenzenAn article published in the 27 March 2003 issue of the Vancouver Columbian. |
Women's history plays an important part in our genealogical research. Based upon English common law, married women could not own property in colonial America and well into the nineteenth century.
The rule was summarized by William Blackstone in his treatise on the laws of England, written in the 1760s, "By marriage, the husband and the wife are one person in law, that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage or at least incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband."
As a consequence, husbands inherited and sold their wives' property. Widows were allowed a "dower right" of one-third of their husband's property, but they usually gave up their right if they re-married. Widows could not be their children's guardians. So, we find men, sometimes relatives, sometimes neighbors, who are named the children's guardians.
Fathers could provide their daughters with a prenuptial marriage settlement, a dowry, to protect them from unscrupulous husbands. This was known as "pin" money. It was an estate that the wife was to possess for her own use and was not subject to the control of her husband.
There were regional differences in the application of the principle that married women had no legal rights. Some states had laws requiring an independent examination of a wife before a husband could sell property. In some southern states, where there was a French/Spanish influence, women had rights to personal, real, and economic property.
On the other hand, unmarried women had legal control of their property. They could dispose of their property without permission from anyone. Unmarried women often gave preferences to their female relatives in dividing their property. Unmarried women maintained control of their property as long as they remained unmarried. Because of this privileged status, we find many families with unmarried daughters.
It seems strange to think that married women had no property rights, that they could not make wills unless approved by their husbands, that they had no control of their children, and that they could not vote. In the 1800s, each state addressed one issue of this inequality through passage of "Married Women's Property Acts."
All of this impacts our genealogical research. We need to look for the husband's name in deed indexes, for he is the one who would sell his wife's property. We won't find a married woman on a tax list, but we may find a widow there. We will seldom find a married woman's will, but we may find the will of a widow.
© 2003
Connie Lenzen, CG
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