Not quite; married women, like minors and idiots, had no legal 
status--could not contract, sue in court, etc. While, a wife retained 
ownership ofher property (slave or land), it was under the total control 
of her husband who managed it and received all benefit from the 
property--rents, wages, etc. Only after her husband died did she regain 
control of her property. True, he could not sell it without her consent, 
but if he survived her, he retained a life interest in it after her 
death if a child was born alive of their union.

Barbara Vines Little, CG, FNGS, FVGS

PO Box 1273
Orange, VA 22960
[log in to unmask]
540-832-3473

CG, Certified Genealogist, is a service mark of the Board for 
Certification of Genealogists, used under license by board certified 
genealogists after periodic evaluation, and the board name is registered 
in the US Patent & Trademark Office.


On 5/17/2012 5:19 PM, Richard Dixon wrote:
> When discussing the property and legal rights of women in "early 
> Virginia," it is important to make the distinction between 
> single/widowed women and married women. Influenced by the Commentaries 
> of Blackstone, married women in the 18th and 19th centurywere 
> considered one with the husband; there were not two separate legal 
> persons. Even when she owned property within the marriage, few would 
> deal directly with her without the consent of her husband. However, a 
> single/widowed woman could inherit property, could purchase property, 
> and could will her property. So, the slaves inherited from her husband 
> by Martha Custis remained her property,  and did not become the 
> property of George Washington upon her marriage to him. Simlarly, 
> Arlington House was deeded to Mary Custis Lee as a life estate, 
> passing in fee on her death to her son Custis Lee (not to be, of 
> course, with the advent of war). A single/widowed woman was f/emme 
> sole, /and except for the right to vote, her legal status was not much 
> different from that of a man.
>
> Richard Dixon
> Editor Jefferson Notes
> 571-748-7660
>
>
> On 5/16/2012 3:55 PM, Eric Richardson wrote:
>> Kevin,
>> The source is from 16th&  17th Century English Literature, not
>> Ecclesiastical debates. This is most readily seen in the homosocial love
>> poetry of Shakespeare, *The Sonnets, *specifically* *to the Young man 
>> and
>> the reasons for marriage. Shakespeare provides the gentry's view on the
>> institution of marriage, not the Church of England's nor that of the 
>> Roman
>> Catholic Church. I will check my source when I next speak to him but 
>> this
>> is the convergence of History, Literary Criticism, and Theology.  If 
>> there
>> is a European (Settler-Colonial) rank before your name, you are not 
>> of the
>> socioeconomic class that I examine; President Jefferson is all well and
>> good, but what about the Hemmings and their relationship to the 
>> Wayles (nee
>> Skelton), since both women shared a common father and children by 
>> Thomas?
>> If slavery ended in 1820 (prior to Jefferson's death), how would his
>> in-laws have received his children by an enslaved mother? How would the
>> local community have reacted?  Would their reaction not have more 
>> bearing
>> on the end of slavery than pronouncements from the pulpit, podium, or
>> political grandstand?  If Melvin Patrick Eli is correct in *Israel on 
>> the
>> Appomattox,* should not the experience of the "otherwise free" serve 
>> as a
>> guiding experience and not just the enslaved people, for the end of 
>> slavery
>> without the Civil War?
>>
>> The equivalency I was attempting was that human beings, that had less 
>> than
>> perfect possession of themselves (enslavement or coverture, as examples)
>> did have acknowledged souls after the Second Great Awakening.  
>> Whether we
>> call it Social or Cultural History, women were treated as property by
>> custom by the lower socioeconomic classes and non-hegemonic groups in 
>> the
>> South.  Even among the elite, Martha Custis Lee (Washington's
>> granddaughter) did not posses Arlington House under her father's 
>> will; her
>> husband, Robert E. Lee, did. She did not enjoy complete possession of
>> herself because of the customs, and the law, at that time.  Even your
>> qualifications as to potential male punishment for assault or murder are
>> couched in a "could."   I agree.  Blanket statements have little 
>> place here
>> but I never said it was law.  It was custom.  When a woman signs her own
>> Marriage Bond during the same time period, it is usually commented 
>> upon by
>> Historians because it is unusual for a woman to assert that form of
>> self-possession.  Frederick Douglass assaulted the white slave 
>> breaker and
>> received no punishment in MD where the law was quite clear about such an
>> attack: death for the assailant.  Yet, the law was ignored for local
>> reasons.  Elizabeth Keckley was unjustly whipped by the headmaster of 
>> the
>> Bingham School in Mebane, NC and while he was not guilty under the 
>> law, she
>> claims that she held him up to public scorn so that he never did it 
>> again.
>> She employed a sophisticated understanding of balance between societally
>> acceptable behavior and as you correctly indicate, the full power 
>> available
>> under the law.  However, if we are not to protect sacred cows, even the
>> argument (as to stratum of human society) that the enslaved could not
>> testify in court does not survive the tale of Hillery G. Richardson's
>> enslaved man, William.  Facts are clear; William brutally attacked and
>> "virtually obliterated" Richardson's knee with a wheat cradle&  scythe
>> after running away and being subsequently whipped.  The jury 
>> investigated,
>> took testimony from enslaved witnesses and returned a conviction on a
>> lesser charge, based in some degree, on those people's testimony. (Eli,
>> 407-11)  This was in subsequent "Massive Resistance" (rolled into 
>> *Brown v
>> Board*) Prince Edward County.  If the attack would have occurred a 
>> decade
>> or more later, William would probably have been lynched.
>>
>> For example, Baptist membership rolls from Sandy Creek Baptist 
>> Association
>> and Kentuck Baptist (the mother church in Pittsylvania county) indicate
>> membership was not extended to the enslaved people until the 1820s, the
>> earliest I recall was 1824.  Prior to that, enslaved and free people, 
>> who
>> were not white, do not appear in the membership lists.  Mount Olive, the
>> mother of Baptist churches in Alamance County, NC had 37 founding 
>> members
>> on 2 August 1834, 26 whites and 11 non-whites.  Kentuck, the Mother in
>> Pittsylvania, was in existence for three decades without non-white
>> membership while Mt. Olive has founding membership that is non-white.
>> Something has changed over that time period in the Baptist church, which
>> appears to represent cultural or social change.  First African 
>> Baptist in
>> Richmond appears to follow a similar pattern when it was turned over,
>> albeit under white supervision, to non-white Trustees.  The point I was
>> responding to was that in 1860, religious groups appear to 
>> acknowledge that
>> the bondspeople have souls because they are baptised and brought under
>> doctrinal punishment regiments.  The Society of Friends had done a 
>> similar
>> inclusionary membership among their future dispossessed enslaved 
>> people in
>> the early 19th Century.  I have always been led to believe, this 
>> doctrinal
>> issue of punishment had prevented earlier memberships because of 
>> oxymoronic
>> nature of Christian master/Christian slave.  I would welcome any 
>> additional
>> information on this change.  I have skimmed Charles' book but have not
>> returned to it yet.  (It is on my summer reading list.)  So by the 
>> 1840s,
>> the Baptist, Friends, Dunkards (who ordained their first African 
>> American
>> minister during the decade), Presbyterians, Wesleyans, and the United
>> Brethren (all with significant memberships in VA and the northern border
>> counties in NC) hold that chattel have souls and can be of the
>> Elect/Select, even if they can be alienated.  That is somewhat 
>> dramatically
>> different than "they were not in the stratum of human society."  If one
>> assumes that literature represents a certain segment of society, then 
>> the
>> status of white women, however that is defined, who had an earlier, 
>> similar
>> position, experienced an evolution of thought on their possession of
>> souls.  If I overstepped propriety, it was not my intent but to compare
>> analogous situations. But does not the enslavement of indentured white
>> women, who had children by enslaved men, allow for more latitude in
>> comparison?  Reproductive control reduced women to slaves for life and
>> their offspring followed *Partus Sequitor Ventrem.*  If one cannot find
>> analogies between antebellum women and chattel, than a considerable 
>> amount
>> of African American Literature that argues for a common enemy for 
>> women and
>> African Americans in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries is based 
>> upon
>> false assumptions.  It is a logical incongruity in sister disciplines 
>> and
>> the fictive realm may tell us more about broader social currents, if one
>> believes Cultural History methodology.
>>
>> I look at ethnicities across the South. If we look at pre-contact VA,
>> Mourning War would have functioned as a societal safety valve, keeping
>> communities in balance by replacing members from outside the group,
>> including women.  Julianna Barr's* Peace Came in the Form of a Woman:
>> Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands* looks at this female
>> commodification in Texas, which may be similiar to what was seen between
>> John Smith&  Pocahontas in VA.  If it is chattel bondage, the woman
>> appears to be alienable, following the Federal Indian Civilization 
>> program
>> under Jefferson, even in historically matrilineal groups.  If it is
>> Mourning War, it is not so clear.  Some Native American females were
>> alienable (those captured in war in VA during the late 17th Century) 
>> while
>> others were not alienable but were still a form of property under a 
>> Native
>> American form of slavery.  This system is what the English colony was
>> founded alongside.  When did it disappear?  The Dawes Freedmen rolls 
>> have
>> Catawba women listed as former bondspeople in the 1890s, who went on the
>> Trail of Tears.  Since Removal was imperfect and the initial 
>> discussion was
>> on the end of slavery without the Civil War, these types of slavery (and
>> with Mourning War, a different route to manumission) exist concurrently
>> with gang, task, maritime, and rice&  indigo slavery.  If we are to 
>> argue a
>> counter-factual, should not divergent sources be included?
>>
>> Thank you for the criticism.  I should have been even more specific.
>> Best,
>> Eric
>>
>> On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 3:45 PM, Hardwick, Kevin - hardwikr<
>> [log in to unmask]>  wrote:
>>
>>> Eric Richardson writes:  "As to inclusion in the stratum of human 
>>> society,
>>> women were property regardless of ethnicity during the same period and
>>> coming from English tradition, there were questions as to whether 
>>> they had
>>> souls.  John Donne, Shakespeare, And Milton all hold a similar 
>>> viewpoint
>>> about women."
>>>
>>> I'd like to see these claims warranted somehow in sources.  I can 
>>> say with
>>> complete confidence, based on study of Church of England theology, 
>>> that no
>>> Anglican, in Virginia or in Great Britain, at any time tried to 
>>> defend the
>>> claim that only men had souls.  The broader notion that Christian faith
>>> more broadly denied the existence of souls in women is something of a
>>> canard, and derives from various relatively obscure debates during the
>>> reformation (over the proper translation of the latin "homo" for 
>>> example).
>>>   I don't know the theology of protestant dissent anywhere near so 
>>> well as I
>>> do that of the Church of England, but I'd be very surprised indeed if
>>> Baptist or Presbyterian ministers at any point attempted to argue that
>>> women did not have souls.  Perhaps Charles Irons or John Ragosta, or
>>> someone similarly knowledgeable in these sources can comment?
>>>
>>> I am also uncomfortable with the blanket assertion that "women were
>>> property" under 17th or 18th century Virginia law.  It certainly is the
>>> case that the legal doctrine of coverture operated in British Colonial
>>> Virginia, and that this doctrine was debilitating to the status of 
>>> women.
>>>   But there were important distinctions between the dependent status of
>>> women and that of enslaved persons.  For one thing, enslaved 
>>> persons, as
>>> property, could be alienated--they could be bought and sold.  For 
>>> another,
>>> Virginia law released masters of slaves from the sanctions applied 
>>> against
>>> men or women who perpetuated the various legal categories of violence
>>> against other persons.  In other words, a master who killed his 
>>> slave was
>>> not guilty of murder; and a master who physically attacked his slave 
>>> was
>>> not guilty of assault or battery.  But in Virginia law, a husband who
>>> killed his wife, or a father who killed his daughter, or a son who 
>>> killed
>>> his mother, *could* be found guilty of murder.  Similarly, a husband 
>>> who
>>> beat his wife, mother, or daughter could, under certain conditions, be
>>> found guilty of assault or battery.  These strike me as important
>>> distinctions.
>>>
>>> Generally speaking, scholars who try to document evolving status of
>>> dependency and supremacy, of hierarchy, or of oppression and 
>>> exploitation,
>>> draw a distinction in their work between the operation of slavery, 
>>> and the
>>> various institutional dependencies to which women were subject.  
>>> Thus, for
>>> example Chris Tomlins, in his brilliant (if unnecessarily difficult and
>>> over-written) study FREEDOM BOUND, treats slavery in one chapter, and
>>> dependencies of gender in another.  He does this because they are 
>>> not the
>>> same thing--they had different logics to them, both legal and 
>>> social, and
>>> hence should be treated as analytically distinct categories.
>>>
>>> All best,
>>> Kevin
>>> ___________________________
>>> Kevin R. Hardwick
>>> Associate Professor
>>> Department of History, MSC 8001
>>> James Madison University
>>> Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807
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>>
>>
>
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