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Women Under Colonial Coverture: Divorce, Property Rights, And Inheritance In Early Massachusetts, Sarah Anne Hogue
Women Under Colonial Coverture: Divorce, Property Rights, And Inheritance In Early Massachusetts, Sarah Anne Hogue
Master's Theses
This thesis focuses on the evolution of women's legal rights - property, inheritance, and divorce- in colonial Massachusetts between 1630 and 1690. The project explores how and to what extent the legal doctrine of coverture- which severely limited married women’s legal rights- functioned in the Massachusetts Bay Colony under its Puritan government. This study examines how coverture directly impacted women’s property and divorce rights in the courts of law in the colonial Massachusetts legal system. It uses primary documents, such as official court records and Puritan sermons, to examine women’s legal rights in that colony through the intersecting lenses of …
Patriarchy And Property: The Nineteenth-Century Mississippi Married Women's Property Acts, Amanda K. Sims
Patriarchy And Property: The Nineteenth-Century Mississippi Married Women's Property Acts, Amanda K. Sims
Theses and Dissertations
The Mississippi Married Women's Property Acts of 1839, 1846, and 1857 reflected the desire of the Mississippi patriarchy to protect themselves from economic instabilities. Analysis of women's deeds in Jefferson county, Mississippi, from 1792 to 1871 and the rulings of the Mississippi High Court of Error and Appeals demonstrate the patriarchy's attempt to balance their desire for preservation of power with honor's demands that patriarchs provide for their families. The MWPA gave women the right to own property in their own names but restricted their ability to use and alienate that property. This made women property owners in name only, …