Women and the Law of Property in Early America
Marylynn Salmon.
Published February 1989. Order online through The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN: 78-0-8078-4244-7.
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.
Endorsements
“An excellent book that portrays in great detail the variations, both large and subtle, that existed in the relationship of women to the law of property in seven colonies. . . . A richly textured portrait not merely of the specific subjects under consideration but indeed of the process through which tradition and innovation interacted in the formation of American legal rules in the colonial period. . . . Genuinely definitive in that it is clearly the starting point for all subsequent investigations of this subject.”
– The William and Mary Quarterly
“Provides a clear and systematic empirical survey of the evolution of women’s property rights; all students of women’s history, legal history, and early American history should read it.”
– Southern Historian
Related Titles:
- Law School: Legal Education in America from the 1850s to the 1980s (Feb 16, 1987)
Robert Stevens. Published February 1987. Order online through The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN: 978-0-8078-4175-4. In this first general history of legal education, Stevens traces the development of law schools, the legal profession, and legal thought, relating their evolution to intellectual, political, and social trends. He describes how the establishment gained power over …
- Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664-1830 (Sep 7, 2006)
Daniel J. Hulsebosch. Published September 2008. Order online through The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN: 978-0-8078-5920-9. According to the traditional understanding of American constitutional law, the Revolution produced a new conception of the constitution as a set of restrictions on the power of the state rather than a mere description of governmental roles. Daniel J. …
- American Legal Realism and Empirical Social Science (Sep 19, 1995)
John Henry Schlegel. Published 1995. Order online through The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN: 978-0-8078-5753-3. John Henry Schlegel recovers a largely ignored aspect of American Legal Realism, a movement in legal thought in the 1920s and 1930s that sought to bring the modern notion of empirical science into the study and teaching of law. In this book, he explores individual …
- The Anti-Rent Era in New York Law and Politics, 1839-1865 (Jun 7, 2006)
Charles W. McCurdy. Published June 2006. Order online through The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN: 978-0-8078-5765-6. A compelling blend of legal and political history, this book chronicles the largest tenant rebellion in U.S. history. From its beginning in the rural villages of eastern New York in 1839 until its collapse in 1865, the Anti-Rent movement impelled the state’s …
- The Invention of Party Politics: Federalism, Popular Sovereignty, and Constitutional Development in Jacksonian Illinois (Dec 13, 2002)
Gerald Leonard. Published December 2002. Order online through The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN: 978-0-8078-2744-4. This ambitious work uncovers the constitutional foundations of that most essential institution of modern democracy, the political party. Taking on Richard Hofstadter’s classic The Idea of a Party System, it rejects the standard view that Martin Van Buren and other …
