Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
A “Hired Girl” Testifies Against The “Son Of A Prominent Family”: Bastardy And Rape On The Nineteenth-Century Nebraska Plains, Donna Rae Devlin
A “Hired Girl” Testifies Against The “Son Of A Prominent Family”: Bastardy And Rape On The Nineteenth-Century Nebraska Plains, Donna Rae Devlin
Department of History: Faculty Publications
In Red Cloud, Nebraska, in 1887, Anna “Annie” Sadilek (later Pavelka) pressed bastardy charges against the “son of a prominent family,” even though she could have, according to her pretrial testimony, pressed charges for rape. To the literary world, Sadilek is better known as Ántonia Shimerda, the powerful protagonist in Willa Cather’s 1918 novel, My Ántonia. However, it is Sadilek’s real-life experience that allows us to better understand life on the Nebraska Plains, specifically through an examination of the state’s rape laws and the ways these laws were subsequently interpreted by the courts. The Nebraska Supreme Court, between 1877 …
A Testament To Power: Mary Woolsey And Dolores Rodriguez As Trial Witnesses In Arizona's Early Statehood, Katrina Jagodinsky
A Testament To Power: Mary Woolsey And Dolores Rodriguez As Trial Witnesses In Arizona's Early Statehood, Katrina Jagodinsky
Department of History: Faculty Publications
In 1913, two women made history when they testified before the all-white, all-male jury of the Superior Court of Yavapai County in the State of Arizona v. Juan Fernandez murder trial. Mary Woolsey, an elderly Yavapai widow, and Dolores Rodriguez, a Mexican single mother of three, established the legal precedent for allowing non-English-speaking, non-citizen women to testify in state courts in Arizona when many other western states still did not grant such privileges to indigenous residents. Woolsey and Rodriguez showed that Arizona's indigenous population were competent, if somewhat problematic, members of Arizona's body politic, and their historic involvement in the …