Henry,
   I dug into this a while back when I was research Mr Jefferson's Women
- but it was one of those things that ended up on the cutting-room floor.
  Marryng a sibling of one's deceased spouse WAS a pretty common event in
colonial Virginia -  . . . anyone who's done much research in
colonial Virginia families -- I dare say in colonial American families - has
stumbled across plenty of examples, though of course its hard to put your
hands on them when a question like this arises.  The VA-HIST archive may
even have some queries and responses back in 04 or 05.
   I had some very helpful email exchanges with Lorri Glover - who treated
some of this in her book _All our relations : blood ties and emotional bonds
among the early South Carolina gentry (Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2000).
   The upshot of it, as I recall, is that after the Reformation the Church
of England retained the Catholic provisions of canon law that
regarded remarriage to the sibling of a spouse as incest, but that those
provisions were loosened in 18th-c Virginia - which would make the 19th law
like the one you describe in effect a _reinstatement_ of mainstream
Anglican/Catholic doctrine.
All best,
Jon

-- 
Jon Kukla
www.JonKukla.com
On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Henry Wiencek <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> I was surprised to read in Annette Gordon-Reed's book on the Hemingses that
> in the early 19th century Virginia outlawed marriage between a man and his
> deceased wife's sister, on the grounds that marrying a sister-in-law was
> incest by affinity (not by blood). I don't know the text of the law, but
> presumably the reverse was also true: a widow could not marry her
> brother-in-law. It's my impression that in the earlier days such marriages
> were relatively common in Virginia. My question for the lawyers on the list
> is: does anyone know when Virginia repealed this ban – or is it still on
> the
> books? Would Virginia have recognized such a marriage if it had been
> solemnized in another state or country?
>
> Henry Wiencek
>
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