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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 …