There is a section in Thomas E. Buckley, The Great Catastrophe of My
Life: Divorce in the Old Dominion (Chapel Hill, 2002) treating changes
in the Virginia law of incest. Not having my copy at hand, I do not
recall precise dates, but someting in the 1780s or 1790s the General
Assembly radically revised the law of incest and made it illegal for the
first time for a person to marry a deceased spouse's sibling. That law
remained on the books for several generations.
Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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