1 Mary L. Minor Diary, 1865–1866, Papers of the Minor and Wilson Family, MSS 38-602, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia (hereafter cited as SSCL).

2 For the story of the riot and the family’s eviction, see Lucy Minor Davis Reminiscences, 1840–1925, Papers of the Fishburne Family, MSS 6355-d, SSCL, 6. The families of nineteenth-century UVA Law professors were intertwined through the women in the families. Mary’s mother, Martha Davis Minor, was the sister of John A. G. Davis, who served as UVA’s Law professor from 1830 to 1840. Martha met her husband, John B. Minor, when she was living with her brother and his wife, Mary Jane Davis, in Pavilion X. While a law student from 1831 to 1834, Minor tutored the Davis children. The ties between the Minors and Davises deepened, as various family members moved in and out of each other’s lives and formed close attachments. In addition to the Lucy Minor Davis Reminiscences, see Catherine Watson, “Reminiscences of the Davis Family,” 1885, Papers of the Carr and Terrell Families, MSS 4757, SSCL; Reck, Henry D., “John Barbee Minor: The Early Years,” The Magazine of Albemarle County 12 (1951–1952): 24–38 Google Scholar; Barringer, Anna, “Pleasant It Is to Remember These Things,” The Magazine of Albemarle County History 24 (1965–1966): 18–21 Google Scholar; “John Barbee Minor,” Virginia Law Register 1 (Nov. 1895): 473.

3 John B. Minor, Last Will and Testament, Feb. 2, 1895, 249–250, Albemarle County Circuit Court, Clerk’s Office (hereafter cited as ACCC).

4 For coverture and nineteenth-century UVA professors, see Edwards, Laura F., “Coverture and Virginia Law Professors: The Nineteenth Century,” Legal Education at the University of Virginia: A History of People, Place, and Pedagogy, 1819–2023 , ed. Cashwell, Meggan A., Flaherty, Randall N., and Moulds, Loren S. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, forthcoming 2025), 109–125Google Scholar. Also see notes 8 and 9 below.

5 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Anthony, Susan B., and Gage, Matilda Joslyn, A History of Woman Suffrage (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1881), vol. 1 Google Scholar.

6 Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, 598 (first quotation) and 593 (second quotation). As Mary Ritter Beard argued decades ago in Women as Force in History: A Study of Tradition and Realities (New York: MacMillan, 1946), nineteenth-century activists focused on these restrictions to accentuate the extent of women’s inequality. While politically astute, the historiographical effect was to flatten the complexities of women’s legal status at the time. Also see Tetrault, Lisa, The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848–1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).Google Scholar

7 Remarks Comprising in Substance Judge Herttell’s Argument in the House of Assembly of the State of New York in the Session of 1837, in Support of the Bill to Restore to Married Women “The Right of Property,” as Guaranteed by the Constitution of This State (New York: Henry Durrel, 1839), 7. Judge Thomas Herttell introduced a bill in the New York Legislature securing the property rights of married women in 1836. According to Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, History of Woman Suffrage (p. 67), Hertell’s wife, Barbara Amelia Hertell, published her husband’s speech posthumously in 1839 in pamphlet form. The pamphlet is eighty pages long, suggesting that either she (or he) added to the speech later, or that her husband had considerable stamina as an orator.

8 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (London, 1765–1769; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 1:430 (on coverture); 2:433–439 (on property); 2:129–139 (on dower). Scholars still cite Blackstone or simply assume his principles when describing married women’s relationship to property in the early nineteenth century, even though historians have been arguing for some time that the situation in the colonial period and the early nineteenth century was more complicated. For Blackstone’s version of coverture and its influence, see Brewer, Holly, “The Transformation of Domestic Law,” in The Cambridge History of Law in America, ed. Tomlins, Christopher L. and Grossberg, Michael, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1:288–323 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Damiano, Sara T., To Her Credit: Women, Finance, and the Law in Eighteenth-Century New England Cities (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Edwards, Laura F., “The Legal World of Elizabeth Bagby’s Commonplace Book: Federalism, Women, and Governance,” Journal of the Civil War Era 9 (Dec. 2019): 504–523 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joan, R. Gundersen and Gwen Victor Gampel, in “Married Women’s Legal Status in Eighteenth-Century New York and Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly 39 (Jan. 1982): 114–134 Google Scholar. For work that suggests a Blackstonian version of coverture developed over time, see Hartigan-O’Connor, Ellen, The Ties That Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salmon, Marylynn, “Women and Property in South Carolina: The Evidence from Marriage Settlements, 1730–1830,” William and Mary Quarterly 39 (Oct. 1982): 655–685 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Siegel, Reva B., “’The Rule of Love’: Wife Beating as Prerogative and Privacy,” Yale Law Journal 105 (June 1996): 2117–2206 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sturtz, Linda L., Within Her Power: Propertied Women in Colonial Virginia (London: Routledge, 2002)Google Scholar.

9 American treatise writers adopted Blackstone early on, especially when it came to domestic relations. Although there are differences on the specifics, they are minor in comparison to the general areas of agreement. St. George Tucker, the father of Virginia Law professor Henry St. George Tucker, was an early adopter. His version of Blackstone’s Commentaries (Philadelphia, 1803) reprinted that text and provided related elements of Virginia law in the footnotes. As John B. Minor later explained in the introduction to the first volume of his influential Institutes of Common and Statute Law, 2 vols. (Richmond, 1876), 1:vii, his “scheme … was to follow in general the outlines of … [Blackstone’s] incomparable Commentaries.” See also James Kent, Commentaries on American Law (New York: O. Halsted, 1827), vol. 2; Tapping Reeve, Law of Baron and Femme; of Parent and Child; of Guardian and Ward; of Master and Servant; and of the Powers of Court of Chancery (New Haven, CT: Oliver Steele, 1816). Those principles moved into magistrates’ manuals slowly, although the influence was evident by the 1830s and, in some cases, before. See Edwards, Laura F., “The Material Conditions of Dependency: The Hidden History of Free Women’s Control of Property in the Early Nineteenth Century South,” in Signposts: New Directions in Southern Legal History, ed. Hadden, Sally and Minter, Patricia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2013), 171–192 Google Scholar; Edwards, Laura F., Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 1.

10 UVA law professors assigned treatises with a Blackstonian conception of coverture, elaborated on it in their lectures, and then drew on those lectures as the basis for their own treatises. Minor’s Institutes were based on lectures delivered by John A. G. Davis that he had heard as a student and then elaborated on when he took over as a UVA law professor. The four volumes of his Institutes of Common and Statute Law (1875–1880) were based on the lectures he had heard as a student and had been refining as a professor for decades. See John B. Minor’s 1866 Notes on Common and Statute Law, Student Notebooks, RG 401, LLSC. The notebooks of other students reflect the centrality of Blackstone to UVA law school’s curriculum, with large sections of notes generally following the organization of his Commentaries. See, for example, Phillip B. Hiden Student Notebook, Student Notebooks, RG 400, Arthur J. Morris Law Library Special Collections, University of Virginia (LLSC) and Robert Thruston Hubard Student Notebook, University of Virginia Student Notebooks, MSS 5624, SSCL.

11 Quotation from Phillip B. Hiden Student Notebook, 2:49. The 1861 notebook of Robert Hubard revealed the nature of that relationship in his notes on the buying and selling of real estate. That right extended to everyone, except: “1) Those wanting understanding, eg idiots, lunatics & infants: (2) Those wanting freedom of will, married persons & those under duress, whether of threats or imprisonment, (3) Those who have no real title to the land.” The claims of wives to family property were akin to those who had none at all. Robert Thruston Hubard Student Notebook, 21. While historians have traced the commercialization of all forms of property, the scholarship generally has not considered women’s property claims as part of that process. Efforts to streamline law and make it more favorable to commercial interests had been ongoing. For classic statements, see Hurst, James Willard, Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956)Google Scholar; Horwitz, Morton J., The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the interposition of lawyers and legal procedure in that transformation, see for instance Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Women before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639–1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Kessler, Amalia D., Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800–1877 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mann, Bruce H., Neighbors and Strangers: Law and Community in Early Connecticut (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Newmyer, R. Kent, “Harvard Law School, New England Legal Culture, and the Antebellum Origins of American Jurisprudence,” Journal of American History 74 (Dec. 1987): 814–835 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 For familial and communal conceptions of property, see Alexander, Gregory S., Commodity and Propriety: Competing Visions of Property in American Legal Thought, 1776–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greer, Allan, Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires, and Land in Early Modern North America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)Google Scholar; Priest, Claire, Credit Nation: Property Laws and Institutions in Early America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021)Google Scholar; Rose, Carol, “Property as Wealth, Property as Propriety,” Nomos 33 (1991): 223–247 Google Scholar; Thompson, E. P., Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act (New York: Pantheon, 1975)Google Scholar.

13 Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, 233 (quotation). Recent work has recovered evidence of women’s property ownership, revealing the various ways they controlled property and their participation in both the slave system and capitalist economic relations. But the work tends to accept the framework of nineteenth-century reformers, particularly reformers’ rigid definition of coverture and their emphasis on individual ownership and legal agency. See, for instance, Jaqueline Beatty, In Dependence: Women and the Patriarchal State in Revolutionary America (New York: New York University Press, 2023); Hartigan-O’Connor, Ellen, The Ties That Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E., They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019)Google Scholar. By contrast, see Mandy L. Cooper, A Republic of Credit: Building a National Family from Revolution to Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2025).

14 It can be difficult to trace property through the female line because women controlled it without owning it and the terms of that control were often negotiated privately, without leaving a paper trail. Even then, some husbands tended to act as if the property was theirs, exaggerating their legal control. For example, Theodorick Bland, Frances Bland Randolph Tucker’s father, deeded her several enslaved people before his death. That deed put in writing what had been assumed when he gave them to her at the time of her first marriage, years prior. She had kept possession of those enslaved people; they did not go into the estate of her first husband when he died, which is what would have happened in the absence of such an agreement. Deed, Theodorick Bland to Frances Randolph, June 1, 1784, box 11, folder 6, series 1: Correspondence, Tucker Coleman Papers, MSS 40T79, Special Collections Research Center, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. Frances Bland Randolph Tucker’s father also left her more enslaved property in his will using language that constituted a separate estate at that time, going to “her and her heirs forever,” although such language was later construed to mean that a husband acquired control during his lifetime. Will, Theodorick Bland, dated July 16, 1780, proved Oct. 29, 1784, Will books, vols., 2–3, 1771–1786, Amelia County Courthouse, Amelia, Virginia, accessed on FamilySearch.org. The will of Tucker’s first husband, John Randolph, in Chesterfield County, Virginia, Wills, 1749–1774, ed. Benjamin B. Weisiger III (Richmond: Weisiger, 1979), 107, gives bequests of land to his sons, when they come of age, but places the family plantation in the care of Frances during her life, with the capacity to divide it among the children as she sees fit. That is where she lived with St. George Tucker after their marriage, although the plantation was to pass to her children by John Randolph, according to Randolph’s will. Various references to St. George Tucker, however, treat Matoax, the Randolph plantation, as if it belonged to him. After the death of Frances, St. George married another heiress, Leila Skipwith Carter, who had property from her own family and her first husband, George Carter. St. George lived on plantation of her first husband. See “St. George Tucker (1752–1827),” Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities, accessed Sept. 26, 2024, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/tucker-st-george-1752-1827/.

15 For the dynamics of entail in the context of Virginia, see Brewer, Holly, “Entailing Aristocracy in Colonial Virginia: ‘Ancient Feudal Restraints’ and Revolutionary Reforms,” William and Mary Quarterly 54 (Apr. 1997): 307–346 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Priest, Claire, “The End of Entail: Information, Institutions, and Slavery in the American Revolutionary Period,” Law and History Review 33 (May 2015): 277–319 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson’s property, see Steven Harold Hochman, “Thomas Jefferson: A Personal Financial Biography” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1987), 62–82. While Hochman notes that Martha Jefferson’s property did not come to her “entirely free and clear” (63) and also indicates the presence of separate estates and entail, he still assumes that the property would be and should be going to her husband, Thomas Jefferson, as soon as all that was cleared up. Jefferson’s efforts to deal with his wife’s entailed land required legislative acts. See Hart, John F., “‘A Less Proportion of Idle Proprietors’: Madison, Property Rights, and the Abolition of Fee Tail,” Washington and Lee Law Review 58 (Winter 2001): 167–194 Google Scholar. See also Will and Codicil of John Wayles (1760, 1772–1773), in Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities, accessed July 7, 2024, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/will-and-codicil-of-john-wayles-1760-1772-1773; Will of Bathurst Skelton, Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities, accessed July 7, 2024, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/will-of-bathurst-skelton.

16 Camp v. Cleary, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, Jan. 19, 1882, 76 Va. 140. For the use of entail, see Priest, Credit Nation, 128-45; Priest, “End of Entail.”

17 Priest, Credit Nation, 128-45; Priest, “End of Entail.” See also Hart, “‘Less Proportion of Idle Proprietors.’”

18 Davis, John A. G., Exposition of the Principles which Distinguish Estates Tail from Other Limitations (Charlottesville, VA: Tompkins & Noel, 1837)Google Scholar; Minor, John B., Institutes of Common and Statute Law (Richmond, VA: Printed for the Author, 1877), 2:85–86 Google Scholar. Questions about entail continued to find their way into court. See, for instance, Bells v. Gillespie, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, June 1827, 5 Rand. 273; Seekright v. Billups, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, Jan. 1, 1833, 31 Va. 90; Pryor v. Duncan, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, Apr. 1, 1849, 47 Va. 27. For continued debates, see Graves, Charles A., “Executory Interests,” Virginia Law Register 4 (1899): 633–661 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Minor, Raleigh C., “Dying without Issue in Virginia,” Virginia Law Register 4 (1899): 804–811 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Will, Jacob Landis Sr., Apr. 8, 1777, no. 19, 28–29, vol. R, Philadelphia Wills. See also Will, Collen McSweeney, Mar. 27, 1777, no. 4, 6–8, vol. R, Philadelphia Wills; Will, George Wescot, no. 10, Sept. 6, 1781, 11–12, vol. S; all in Philadelphia Wills, Vol. R–S, 1778–1784, Pennsylvania Wills and Probate Records, 1683–1993, Ancestry.com. While husbands and fathers did not always use that language, the kinds of property they willed to their wives and daughters suggest a similar recognition. This language was also used in deeds, with husbands securing their wives’ property to them before their deaths; Statement, James Burn, Mar. 28, 1792, 63, Vol. A, Deeds, Vol. A–C, 1791–1801, Kershaw County, South Carolina, Wills and Probate Records, Ancestry.com. The practice was explicit in Louisiana, where the state’s civil code allowed women to reclaim property they brought into a marriage or acquired afterward. See Louisiana Civil Code, chap. 4, art. 2425 and 2426, pp. 1135–1136, https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=la_civilcode_book_iii#page=45. For exemplary cases, see Lizabet Barray vs. Pierre Roger [Meyer], her husband, no. 23; Magdelene Rion vs. Administrators of Rion, no. 28; Duplantier, Wife vs. Syndics of A. Duplantier, no. 377; Madam Durant vs. L. Durant her husband, no. 684; Madame Duvall vs. Duvall her husband and Larquette his syndic and executor, no. 899; Suit Records, Parish Court, 1813–1835, New Orleans City Archives. For the point about married women retaining control of certain kinds of property, particularly textiles, see Laura F. Edwards, Only the Clothes on Her Back. For married women’s claims to furniture and other household goods, see Alexandra Finley, “A Murder and Some Furniture,” paper for the History of Value in Nineteenth-Century North America, conference held at Princeton University, Apr. 2023, paper in possession of author.

20 Louisiana is an exception; see note 19. For Charles Minor’s estate, see Charles Minor, Will and Inventory, 1861, Will Book, 348–349 (will), 416–426 (inventory), ACCC; Charles Minor and John B. Minor, Daybook of Brookhill Farm, Albemarle County, Virginia, MSS 13912, SSCL; 110 (quotation). Mary L. Minor also inventoried a family estate later in the nineteenth century. From her notes, it was clear that many of purchasers were married women. See Mary L. Minor, Wastebook, Minor and Wilson Family Papers, box 55, MSS 3750-a, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. For the centrality of women in settling their families’ estates, see Damiano, To Her Credit. As Robert W. Gordon has argued, the legal rules associated with wills, as adopted in the post-Revolutionary United States, empowered the owner while disempowering everyone else and so “invariably restricts freedom while creating it.” Gordon, Robert W., “Paradoxical Property,” in Early Modern Conceptions of Property, ed. Brewer, John and Staves, Susan (London: Routledge, 1996), 95–110 Google Scholar (quotation on 102).

21 Deeds of household goods from Kershaw County, South Carolina, are illustrative of general trends. Deed, John Moore to Thomas Pace, Oct. 20, 1792, 58, vol. A; Deed, Clemment Stewart to Lydia Stewart, John Stewart, Elizabeth Stewart, and Jean Stewart, Dec. 10, 1793, 130–131, vol. A; Deed, John Kirkley to Willoughby Stone, Oct. 3, 1793, 152–153, vol. A; Deed, Hugh Brown to Mary Brown, Feb. 3, 1795, 137, vol. A; Deed, Isabella London and Ann London to Margaret McDonald, Dec. 29, 1796, 228, vol. A; all in Deeds, vol. A–C, 1791–1801, Kershaw County, South Carolina, Wills and Probate Records, Ancestry.com. Enslaved people were deeded separately or along with household goods and/or land; see Deed, Clemment Stewart to Lydia Stewart, John Stewart, Elizabeth Stewart, and Jean Stewart, Dec. 10, 1793, 130–131, vol. A; Deed, Elizabeth McNair to Margaret Cathcart Mathis, Apr. 12, 1800, 244, vol. C; both in Deeds, vol. A–C, 1791–1801, Kershaw County, South Carolina, Wills and Probate Records, Ancestry.com. For examples of people deeding property before they died, instead of passing it through a will, see Deed, Lueresy Drone to John Nicholas Hatch and George Efron Kebler, Aug. 25, 1792, 55, vol. A; Deed, David Hunter to George Ross, Nov. 15, 1792, 58–61, vol. A; both in Deeds, vol. A–C, 1791–1801, Kershaw County, South Carolina, Wills and Probate Records, Ancestry.com.

22 For separate estates, see Lebsock, Suzanne D., The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784–1860 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 54–86 Google Scholar; Beard, Women as Force in History, 77–105; Marylynn Salmon, “Women and Property in South Carolina: The Evidence from Marriage Settlements, 1730–1830,” William and Mary Quarterly 39 (Oct. 1982): 655–685. For examples of separate estates that gave women control over the management of property, see Marriage Settlement of George W. Mordecai and Margaret B. Cameron, 1853, box 99, folder 2208, Cameron Family Papers; Indenture, Mary Cain Sutherland, Willie N. White, and William M. Green, Dec. 28, 1839, folder 2, Mangum Family Papers, no. 483, folder 2; both in Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (hereafter cited as SHC). Indenture, Bartholomew Henry Himeli, Rachel Villepontoux Moore Russ, and John Paul Grimké, Jan. 7, 1764, Charleston, Wills and Miscellaneous Records, vol. 90, 1765–1796, 255–261; Will of John Paul Grimké, Charleston, July 12, 1785, Wills, vol. 24, 1786–1793, 833–836, both in South Carolina, Wills and Probate Records, 1670–1980, in Ancestry.com. Elizabeth P. Townsend by Daniel Doyley vs. Dr. J. Townsend and Edmund Bellinger, 1797, no. 15, box 1, 1791–1799, Equity Bills, Court of Equity, Charleston County, South Carolina Department of Archives and History (SCDAH). Barnes’s Lessee v. Irwin et all, Pennsylvania, 1 Yeates (1793), 222. In her will, Margaret Hinton created a trust for her husband from her own separate estate, suggesting the extent of her control; Will of Margaret G. Hinton, Aug. 2, 1855, box 1, folder 9, in the Moore and Gatling Law Firm Papers, 00521, SHC.

23 Stinson v. Day, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, Dec. 1, 1842, 40 Virginia 435. For separate estates involving modest amounts of property, see separate estate by deed, Aug. 29, 1767, George Welch to his daughter Ann Murphey, 174–175; separate estate by deed, Dec. 9, 1767, Barbara Jones to her daughters Mary and Barbara Jones, 319; separate estate by a marriage settlement, Jan. 8, 1768, between Elizabeth Stevens and Joseph Henkison, 419–421; separate estate by marriage settlement, Nov. 22, 1786, Doctor John Weston, Mary Raven, and Robert Rawlins, 456–458. For the commonality of separate estates, see Lebsock, Free Women of Petersburg, 54–86; Salmon, “Women and Property in South Carolina.” In the early nineteenth century, state appellate courts flipped the logic that applied to separate estates. The presumption had been that separate estates specified what could not be done with the property and that everything else was in bounds; instead, courts insisted that documents specify what could be done with the property and that everything else was out of bounds. While this transition usually went unremarked, it is discussed in Lancaster v. Dolan, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Jan. 1, 1829, 1 Rawle 231. The results went against settled expectations, gave rise to legal challenges, and made it more difficult to create and manage property through this legal mechanism. For the Virginia appellate court’s insistence on specific wording, see Pickett and Wife and others v. Chilton, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, Mar. 11, 1817, 19 Va. 467; Williamson v. Beckham, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, Feb. 1, 1837, 35 Va. 20; Woodson v. Perkins, Jan. 1, 1849, 46 Va. 345; Parker v. Wasley’s Ex’r, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, Nov. 15, 1852, 50 Va. 477; Rayfield v. Gaines, Apr. 30, 1867, 58 Va. 1; McChesney v. Brown’s Heirs, Nov. 12, 1874, 66 Va. 393; Stroud v. Connelly, Apr. 15, 1880, 74 Va. 217; Frank v. Lillienfeld, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, Aug. 5, 1880, 74 Va. 377. At the same time, courts carved out more ways for creditors to claim property lodged in married women’s names, particularly by loosening the restrictions on married women using separate estates to pay their husbands’ debts and strengthening husbands’ claims on property given to their wives. As the decision in Buck v. Wroten, Jan. 21, 1874, 65 Va. 250, states, “courts of equity will not deprive the husband of his rights at law unless the words relied upon to create a separate estate, of themselves leave no doubt of the intention to exclude him.” Courts further complicated the legal status of separate estates by changing the base line for what married women could do without specific language. For the claims of creditors and changing legal grounds for what women could do, see, for example, Nickell v. Handly, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, Sept. 8, 1853, 51 Va. 336; Penn v. Whitehead, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, Feb. 5, 1855, 53 Va. 74; Penn v. Whitehead, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, June 26, 1867, 58 Va. 503; Brent v. Washington’s Adm’r, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, May 15, 1868, 59 Va. 526; Muller v. Bayly, Nov. 17, 1871, 63 Va. 2; Campbell v. Prestons, July 6, 1872, 63 Va. 396; Shackelford’s Adm’r v. Shackelford, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, Dec. 4, 1880, 74 Va. 51; Finch v. Marks, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, Feb. 9, 1882, 1882 WL 6012. Other decisions protecting the separate estates of married women indicate that there was still considerable support for conceptions of family property, even in the late nineteenth century. By the late nineteenth century, some legal commentators insisted that separate estates had not been widely used at all; see Burks, M. P., Notes on the Property Rights of Married Women in Virginia (Lynchburg, VA: J. P. Bell, 1894)Google Scholar.

24 Edwards, Only the Clothes on Her Back, esp. chaps. 4, 6, and 11. For the economic activities of women in the extended Minor family, see Barringer, Anna, “Pleasant It Is to Remember These Things,” The Magazine of Albemarle County History 24 (1965–1966): 18–21 Google Scholar; Lucy Minor Davis, Reminiscences; Catherine Watson, Reminiscences of the Davis Family, Terell-Carr Manuscripts, box 2, SSCL. In the late nineteenth century, the Virginia appellate court issued a ruling that neatly summarized the erasure of domestic labor’s value, stating that such work when performed by female relatives, was not considered labor deserving of compensation; Harshberger’s Adm’r v. Alger, Nov. 21, 1878, 72 Va. 52.

25 Edwards, Only the Clothes on Her Back, chaps. 11 and 12. The decisions in note 23 on separate estates were part of this effort, as was legislation abolishing entail, limiting the ability of individuals to pass property through the generations in other ways, and elevating coverture over other forms of law. The fraud statute dated from Elizabeth England and gave courts broad powers to oversee debtors’ property to preserve the interests of creditors. There was a carve out for separate estates. But, with the passage of married women’s property acts, courts began using their power in ways that undermined principles that protected married women’s property from their husbands and their husbands’ creditors. See note 30 below.

26 Will, George Schmidt, Sept. 1, 1826, no. 143, Wills, book 9, part 1, 1826–1829, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Wills and Probate Records, 1683–1993, Ancestry.com.

27 John B. Minor, diary, vol. 2, 278–289, 306–326, MSS 3114, SSCL. For examples of cases, see Penn v. Whiteheads, Feb. 5, 1855, 53 Va. 74; William and Mary College v. Powell, May 15, 1855, 53 Va. 372; Campbell v. Bowles’ Adm’r, Sept. 19, 1878, 71 Va. 652; Frank v. Lillienfeld, Aug. 5, 1880, 74 Va. 377; Triplett v. Romine’s Adm’r, Oct. 7, 1880, 74 Va. 651; William v. Lord, Mar. 1, 1881, 75 Va. 390; Hayes v. Virginia Mutal Protection Association, Feb. 16, 1882, 76 Va. 225.

28 The first act, passed in 1874, was a poorly designed debt relief act and had to be revised to secure property to married women. Married Women’s Property Act, 1875, Acts of Assembly (Virginia, 1874–75), 442–443. There was very little discussion of the acts at the time of their passage; see Virginia Gianakos, “Virginia and the Married Women’s Property Acts” (MA thesis, University of Virginia, 1982); Sarah Frances Ketchum, “Married Women’s Property Law in Nineteenth-Century Virginia” (MA thesis, University of Virginia, 1985). For married women’s property acts and their relationship to familial conceptions of property, see Lebsock, Suzanne D., “Radical Reconstruction and the Property Rights of Southern Women,” The Journal of Southern History 43 (May 1977): 195–216 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rabkin, Peggy, “The Origins of Law Reform: The Social Significance of the Nineteenth-Century Codification Movement and Its Contribution to the Passage of the Early Married Women’s Property Acts,” Buffalo Law Review 24 (Spring 1975): 683–760 Google Scholar. See also Basch, Norma, In the Eyes of the Law: Women, Marriage and Property in Nineteenth Century New York (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Chused, Richard H., “Married Women’s Property Law: 1800–1850,” Georgetown Law Journal 71 (June 1983): 1359–1424 Google Scholar.

29 Gianakos, “Virginia and the Married Women’s Property Acts”; Ketchum, “Married Women’s Property Law in Nineteenth-Century Virginia.” Debates surrounding homestead exemptions, which also put property in married women’s hands were also framed in terms of welfare; see Morantz, Alison D., “There’s No Place Like Home: Homestead Exemption and Judicial Constructions of Family in Nineteen-Century America,” Law and History Review 24 (Summer 2006): 245–295 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 For the limitations of married women’s property acts, see Basch, Norma, “Invisible Women: The Legal Fiction of Marital Unity in Nineteenth-Century America,” Feminist Studies 5 (Summer 1979): 346–366 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chused, Richard D., “Late Nineteenth Century Married Women’s Property Law: Reception of the Early Married Women’s Property Acts by Courts and Legislatures,” American Journal of Legal History 29 (1985): 3–35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoff-Wilson, Joan, “The Unfinished Revolution: Changing Legal Status of U.S. Women,” Signs 13 (Autumn 1987): 7–36 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Siegel, Reva B., “Home as Work: The First Woman’s Rights Claims Concerning Wives’ Household Labor, 1850–1880,” Yale Law Journal 103 (1994): 1073–1217 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The principle that married women’s property had to be kept separate from household property was still in place in the twentieth century; see Norris v. Barbour, Record no. 3413, Jan. 10, 1949, 188 Va. 723.

31 Edwards, Only the Clothes on Her Back, chaps. 11–12. A WestLaw search for key words “separate estate” and “wife” pulls up a variety of twentieth-century Virginia cases involving the kind of financial issues that plague families, such as medical bills, unpaid rent and lapsed mortgages, and child support. Women’s separate estates figure into these matters as a measure of women’s ability to support themselves and their children as well as a means of holding women responsible for familial debts.

32 Agreement between Mary L. Minor and Margaret R. Bryan, Sept. 20, 1898; Agreement between Mary L. Minor and Margaret R. Bryan, Oct. 15, 1898; Agreement between Mary L. Minor and Margaret R. Bryan, Apr. 15, 1901; Agreement between Mary L. Minor and Susan C. Wilson, Jan. 12, 1901; all in Mary L. Minor and Susan C. M. Wilson Financial and Legal Records, series G, reel 58, Southern Women and Their Families in the Nineteenth Century: Papers and Diaries (microfilm). The dates of these agreements overlap, suggesting that some may not have been in force. But the overall pattern is clear: Mary L. Minor had to rent out part of the house.

33 Mary L. Minor, Last Will and Testament, Apr. 24, 1902, 420, ACCC. Petition of Susan Colston Wilson, Affidavit, and Order, Circuit Court of the County of Albemarle, 1909, Mary L. Minor and Susan C. M. Wilson Financial and Legal Records, series G, reel 58, Southern Women and Their Families in the Nineteenth Century: Papers and Diaries (microfilm). For Susan C. M. Wilson, see Susan Colston Wilson Papers, “A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of Southern Women and Their Families in the Nineteenth Century: Papers and Diaries, Series G, Holdings of the University of Virginia Library, Part 2: Central Piedmont Virginia,” 71–72.