By Sandra Moncrief

Mississippi was the first state in the nation to grant married women the right to hold property in their own names. Two little known but important events in the 1830s led to this reform in women’s rights. These events and the laws that resulted have been virtually overlooked by historians — possibly because the circumstances surrounding the reform were, and continue to be, a mystery.

As early as 1823, Maine granted property ownership rights to women deserted by their husbands, and Massachusetts followed with a similar law in 1835. But in no state were married women, living with their husbands, allowed ownership of property, either willed to them or earned by them. When a woman married, her property was placed under the absolute control of her husband. This practice was based on the belief that the wife’s personality merged with that of the husband at the time of marriage. After marriage, the wife’s property could be attached and sold to pay her husband’s debts. Many women, especially daughters of large plantation owners, lost all of their property and thus financial security when their husbands fell on hard times. Mary Chesnut, a native of South Carolina, wrote in her diary as late as 1863, “We had our share of my father’s estate. It came into our possession so long after we were married, and it was spent for debts already contracted.” In Mrs. Chesnut’s case, her father-in-law had died and left his estate to her husband, James Chesnut, along with all of the debts incurred, which were more than the assets. Thus, Mrs. Chesnut’s property, left to her by her father, Stephen Miller, was lost. It was long after the Civil War that South Carolina granted property rights to women.

In the 1830s, Mississippi was experiencing rapid growth and radical change. Until this time the river counties controlled politics in state government, but with the advent of the Jacksonian Democracy in the late 1820s and the opening of new lands through the Indian Cessions of 1820, 1830, 1832, and 1837, life began to take on a different tone. Jacksonian Democracy flourished as the masses of immigrants poured into the state and populated the newly acquired Indian lands. Mississippi now was experiencing “flush times.” Land speculators using easy credit and diverse banking entities operated unsupervised. Joseph G. Baldwin wrote in his account of The Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi:

The country was just settling up. Marvellous accounts had gone forth of the fertility of its virgin lands; and the productions of the soil were commanding a price remunerating to slave labor as it had never been remunerated before. Emigrants came flocking in from all quarters of the Union, especially from the slave holding states. The new country seemed to be a reservoir, and every road leading to a vagrant stream of enterprise and adventure. Money, or what passed for money, was the only cheap thing to be had. Every crossroad and every avocation presented an opening, through which a fortune was seen by the adventurer in near perspective. Credit was a thing of course. To refuse it — if the thing was ever done — were an insult for which a bowie-knife were not a too summary or exemplary a means of redress. The state banks were issuing their bills by the sheet, like a patent steam printing press its issues; and no other showing was asked for of the applicant for the loan than an authentication of his great distress for money. Finance even in its most exclusive quarter, had thus already got, in this wonderful revolution, to work upon the principles of the charity hospital. If an overseer grew tired of supervising a plantation and felt a call to the mercantile life, even if he omitted the compendious method of buying out a merchant wholesale, stock, house and good will, and laying down, at once, his bull-whip for the yardstick — all he had to do was to go on to New York, and present himself in Pearl Street with a letter avouching his citizenship, and a clean shirt, and he was regularly given a through ticket to speedy bankruptcy. . . Under this stimulating process, prices rose like smoke. Lots in obscure villages were held at city prices; lands, bought at the minimum cost of government, were sold at from thirty to forty dollars per acre and considerd dirt cheap at that . . . Banks, chartered on a specie basis, did a very flourishing business on the promissory notes of the individual stockholders ingeniously substituted in lieu of cash. They issued ten for one, the one being fictitious. They generously loaned all the directors could not use themselves, and were not choice whether Bardolph was the endorser for Falstaff, or Falstaff borrowed on his own proper credit, or the funds advanced him by Shallow. The stampede towards the golden temple became general; the delusion prevailed far and wide that this thing was not a burlesque on commerce and finance … The condition of society may be imagined; — vulgarity — ignorance — fussy — and arrogant pretention — unmitigated rowdyism — bullying insolence, if they did not rule the hour, seemed to wield unchecked dominion. The workings of these choice spirits were patent upon the fact of society; and the modest, unobtrusive, retiring men of worth and character (for there were many, perhaps a large majority of such) were almost lost sight of in the hurly-burly of those strange and shifting scenes.

As the ability of get-rich-quick schemes increased, so did the possibility to fail increase. Many speculative landowners found themselves ruined when, in 1836, specie payments were required of receivers of public money. Payment of public lands and the Distributive Act of 1836, which provided that each state receive a share proportional to its representation in Congress, proved to be a drain on the Mississippi banks. The banks thus had to call in loans to make the transfer of funds to the state government; land owners, whose financing was mostly on paper, were forced into bankruptcy. Like the rest of the country, Mississippi was now experiencing the Panic of 1837, but she was especially hard-hit by the turmoil in the state.

The lives of two Mississippi women intertwined into all of this turmoil. They were very different from each other, but both had the same goal in mind: to preserve what was rightfully their own. Their husbands also had a stake in the proceedings, but one would assume that both spouses were concerned with protection of their joint property.

Who were these women and what personal interest did they have in seeking protection for their property? Did they want control of the estates left to them by their fathers? Did they want the revenue from the businesses they operated, hand in hand with their husbands? Were they feminists, influenced by Jackso-nian Democracy and the writings of the Grimke Sisters and other feminists in the North? Or possibly, was this all a strategy on the part of each husband to protect his property from confiscation for debts?

The first of these women to counter the English common law was Betsy Love Allen. She was the daughter of one of the Colberts, a half-breed Chickasaw chief. Upon his death, Colbert had left his daughter a very wealthy woman, in possession of many slaves and land. Betsy Allen was the wife of James Allen, a white man. He and his wife operated a trading post on the Natchez Trace.

Betsy Love married John Allen before 1830, according to the tribal customs and laws of the Chickasaw tribe. In January, 1830, the laws of the State of Mississippi were extended over the Indians. The legislature stated at time of the passage of these laws that all marriages and matrimonial connections entered into by virtue of any custom or usage of the Indians, and by them deemed valid, shall be held as valid and obligatory as if the same had been solemnized by the laws of the State of Mississippi. By the customs of the Chickasaws the husband acquired no right to the wife’s property that she possessed at the time of marriage. It remained to her separate use and subject alone to her disposition and constraint. She was perfectly independent of the husband, so far as regards the obligation of contracts and the acquisition and rights of property.

On November 14,1829, Betsy Allen deeded the slave Toney, who had been left to her by her father, over to her infant daughter Susan. In August, 1830, John Allen became indebted to a Mr. Fisher. The deed of gift was recorded in Monroe County on November 2, 1830. Allen later defaulted and Fisher sued him for the slave Toney. The case went to the Mississippi Supreme Court, where the justices had two questions to resolve: first, did Allen acquire legally protected interest in Betsy Love’s property at the time of their marriage, and, second, was the gift of property to his daughter, Susan Allen, void as to his creditors?

In January, 1837, the Mississippi Supreme Court handed down a decision written by Judge William L. Sharkey, who ruled in favor of the Indian woman, Betsy Love Allen, who was allowed to retain control of the property left her by her father. The court ruled that the slave was proved to be the separate property of Betsy Allen at the time of the donation, and since the marriage of Betsy and John Allen was a valid union under tribal law, it was considered as equally valid at their commencement as at the passage of the state laws. The terms of the marriage contract between Allen and Betsy Love, as modified by the customs of the Chickasaws, conferred no right on him to the separate property of his wife. Also, no just construction could be given to the act by the customs of the Chickasaws, conferred no right on him to the separate property of his wife. Also, no just construction could be given to the act validating their marriage, which would alter their condition or extend the marital rights on the husband. Such a construction would be in conflict with the constitution and would work a divestiture of her rights. The property of Betsy Love Allen was therefore not subject to the demands of John Allen’s creditors. As the court ruled in favor of Betsy Allen, the second question as to the validity of the gift to Susan Allen was moot.

Mrs. Allen never saw her initial effort come to fruition in 1839 through the efforts of another woman, Piety Smith Hadley, and the passage in the legislature of the Married Women’s Property Act. Betsy Allen died the same year the court decision was handed down. It is believed that her remains were removed from the old Indian Burial Ground that had become a pasture in the early 1960s and ceremoniously re-interred in a new grave on the campus of the Toccopola High School at Toccopola, Mississippi. It is said that a piece of concrete from an old sidewalk marks the grave of Betsy Allen.

Two years after the Allen decision, a bill was introduced into the Mississippi legislature entitled “An act for the protection and preservation of the rights and property of Married Women.”. This bill was introduced by State Senator Thomas B.J. Hadley of Hinds County, husband of Piety Smith Hadley. Colonel Hadley and his wife Piety owned and operated a boarding house in Jackson, approximately two blocks from the newly constructed State Capitol. The boarding house was located on a plot of land comprising the block of George Street, North State Street, and North Street. In Jackson’s earliest days as a town and seat of state government, early state officials, legislators, and travelers boarded with private families while tending to their official duties. Out of this the need for and popularity of boarding houses grew. Although the new Capitol was still unfinished in 1839, the legislature moved in and held its first session in the new building. Jackson was now a hustling, bustling city that had grown from six families in the 1820s to approximately 900 residents in 1839.

Mr. and Mrs. Hadley’s boarding house became a social center for the legislators when the legislature was in session. Because of lack of documented evidence from this period, one can only imagine the excitement generated and the content of the conversations that occurred around Mrs. Hadley’s dining room table. She served three meals a day to the influential gentlemen, but tradition has it that during the legislative session she would suggest to these gentlemen bills that she was interested in having passed. It is said that, if they refused to agree, she would serve short rations and traditional hash and give no comfort until they came around to her way of thinking. It was in this climate that Mrs. Hadley began to lobby for the rights of married women to retain control of their property, left to them or earned by them. Traditionally upon marriage a woman’s property became her husband’s property, and any revenue generated by her labors was also legally his.

An examination of Mrs. Hadley’s background and that of her husband partially explains their desire to change the law. Piety Smith Hadley was born on April 2, 1807, in Christian County, Kentucky. She was the daughter of Major David Smith and his wife, Obedience Fort Smith. Major Smith had ridden the Wilderness Trail with Andrew Jackson and Jackson’s wife from Natchez, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee. Smith had also formed a military unit from his own kin — nephews, uncles, brothers and sons — and fought with Jackson at Horseshoe Bend. In 1820, the Indian cessions in Mississippi were beginning to open, and Major Smith purchased a large section of land near present-day Raymond. He carved his home out of the wilderness and named it “Soldiers Rest.” Here, Piety Smith, who was then fifteen, grew up. Major Smith became a leader in politics and an important figure in the new frontier of Mississippi. Eventually he would have a Mississippi county dedicated to him and named for him. His children numbered eleven, Piety being the seventh child. She had an older sister, Obedience, who married Hiram G. Runnels the year after their move from Kentucky. Runnels, a prominent state leader at the time, would later be elected governor of Mississippi.

In June of 1831, Piety Smith became the wife of Thomas B.J. Hadley in Hinds County, Mississippi. The same month, Major Smith, Piety’s father, added a codicil to his will, leaving to his two sons, Benjamin Fort Smith and Jackson Smith, two Negro female slaves, one named Rose and the other Caroline, both about fourteen or fifteen years of age, “to have and hold to themselves and to the survivor of them and his heirs, to and for the use and benefit of said daughter, Piety Smith Hadley and her heirs forever.” He also bequeathed to Piety one quarter section of land to be laid off of lands as directed. Major Smith either sensed a need to protect his daughter’s property from the bad judgment of her husband or was determined to keep the property in his own family’s control.

From all indications, Colonel Hadley was a successful businessman and politician; but some newspaper articles lead one to believe that at times he was experiencing difficulty in his public and private life, any of which could have led to his interest in protection of his property.

In the 1839 legislative term, Thomas Hadley asked and obtained leave to the introduction of a bill to be entitled “An act to incoporate the Mississippi Importing and Exporting Company.” A deed in the Raymond courthouse during this time names Thomas Hadley as president of Mississippi Importing Company. In this same term of the legislature, Henry Stuart Foote, in a grand oration to the House of Representatives, stated that the firm of Messrs. Richter, Hadley, Davis and Company was in collusion with the Mississippi Union Bank in misuse of bank funds to finance this cotton agency. Just prior, in 1835, Governor Hiram G. Runnels resigned his post as governor one month early and immediately accepted the position as president of the newly formed Mississippi Union Bank. Were Runnels and Hadley involved in dubious dealings? Was Mr. Hadley using his political clout to feather his own nest?

Thomas Hadley was evidently experiencing financial difficulties of some sort. In the same term of the legislature a bill was introduced in the Senate “for the relief of T.B.J. Hadley and Samuel M. Puckett, his security.” Hadley and Puckett each had executed three joint promissory notes for $401.33 to the governor for the use of the state of Mississippi, and they had received no consideration. The auditor of public accounts was authorized to release them from payment of these notes. This money was probably used for the completion of the governor’s mansion, which (although funds were appropriated in 1833) was not completed until 1841, at a cost of several times the original amount. Hadley’s brother-in-law and governor at the time, H.G. Runnels, had to borrow money in his own name for the completion.

Thomas Hadley was also in trouble with members of his political party. The newspaper Southern Sun in February of 1839 lambasted Hadley and others for joining ranks of a “party against whose manifold abuses they battled manfully for many years — a party diametrically opposed to them in every political opinion. Professing to be genuine states-rights men, those apostate nullifiers have deserted their proud and enviable stations and are now familiarly ‘sipping tea’ in the camps of the ‘party’ — a party that openly proclaimed in the Proclamation that States have no rights. They are therefore nullifiers by name, but federalists in practice.” Hadley’s name is encircled in a bold, black square, in “order that the people may more readily place their eyes upon those who were deaf to the cry of their distresses.” The article concluded, “We do not say or believe, that those Senators were influenced by improper motives. No doubt they were Honest in their position, but with all due deference, we humbly consider them most egregiously mistaken. “ At this time, Colonel Hadley was requested by some of his constituents to resign from office. A petition was to be circulated throughout the county for signatures. It stated that shortly after taking office, Colonel Hadley “gave manifest signs that he was not what the people considered him to be.” He stood for the side of the Locofocos, a radical group, and their advocacy of the sub-treasury bill, a measure calculated to place the national purse in the hands of the federal executives.

Aside from Thomas Hadley’s problems, an additional influence on the Hadleys’ thinking might have been the close proximity to Louisiana and the influence of its civil laws. Thomas Hadley’s family had moved to Wilkinson County, Mississippi, from South Carolina in the early 1820s. About ten years later, some of the family migrated farther west into Rapides Parish, Louisiana. It is thought that at this time Piety and T.B.J. Hadley moved to Louisiana for a short time. Elizabeth Gaspar Brown suggests that while living there, Mrs. Hadley might have become impressed with the Louisiana Civil Code, which allowed married women control of their own property.

Whatever the influence, the fact remains that on Monday, January 21, 1839, the bill “for the protection and preservation of the rights and property of married women” was introduced. The Journal of the Senate reported that the bill was read for the first time, two hundred copies ordered printed, and the bill was laid on the table. On Saturday, January 26, Thomas Hadley moved to call the bill from the table. The bill was ordered to be placed upon the orders of the day. The Senate resolved itself into a committee for debate of the bill.

Mississippi newspapers reported the proceedings, as the bill immediately provoked strong feelings on both sides. Brown summarizes the progression of the debate that preceded the bill’s passage. Mr. Grayson, a state senator, predicted that within “six months all the married women would have all the property and it would thus be exempt from their husband’s creditors.” Hadley answered Grayson, saying that the bill was not intended for fraud, but “to secure to man’s dearest idol the possession of the property which they have required [sic] by their own exertion or the liberty of a fond father.” Hadley continued,

Is there a wish of such gross injustice in the mind of any man, that he would withhold from women the shield of protection which this bill proposes, Does man delight in woman's happiness, Then give them the plighted faith over legislation that they shall possess and enjoy the means of their own pleasure. I would, sir, secure to them the product of their own labor — I would secure to them the possession of the property given them by fond parents or relatives. Secure this, sir, — 'tis all I ask.

Senator Tucker, in agreement with Senator Grayson, stated that “‘female delicacy forbids their participation in the turmoils and strife of business’ and moreover ‘the bill proposes a total and radical change in the settled law of the country.’“ Senator Matthews agreed with these gentlemen and stated that

a man would have it "in his power to defraud his creditors by selling his property and putting the money into the hands of a friend to buy a plantation and negroes to be given to his wife. The injury to be inflicted by this bill upon creditors is incalculable and the credit of Mississippi is, in all conscience, low enough already."

Grayson concluded,

If you degrade and disgrace all that is lovely in woman, pass this bill; but if you would sustain them firmly in the high and exhaulted eminence which they now occupy in the eyes of the world and of men, spurn and reject this bill, as one of the most unholy and fraudulent devices ever presented.

According to the Journal of the Senate, the committee rose February 11 and approved said bill with an amendment thereto, “that any married woman may become seized or possessed of any property, real or personal, by direct bequest, demise, gift, purchase, or distribution in her own name, and as of her own property, provided the same does not come from her husband after coverture.” Another amendment submitted by Grayson was rejected:

That the names of all slaves under the provisions of this act, that become the property of the wife during her coverture or which she may be entitled to at the time of her marriage, shall be recorded and the slaves designated as her property, in the registrar's office of the county of her residence, within twelve months after she shall become entitled to the same, and on failure to record the same said property, shall be liable to the debts of her husband contracted thereafter.

Grayson, adamant in his beliefs, moved to postpone the bill indefinitely, but before the question was taken, the Senate adjourned for the day. The bill was ordered read for the third time the next day. Grayson tried again to propose another amendment that would shorten the period of possible registration to three months and eliminate the restraint on the time of contraction of the husband’s debts by striking out the words, “contracted thereafter.” This amendment was also rejected and the bill then came up for a final vote. Nineteen voted in favor of the bill; nine against. On February 15, four days after passage of the bill by the Senate, a message was received from the state House of Representatives, stating that they had passed the bill, but not without opposition.

In the House, the Honorable Robert Josselyn pointed out the obnoxious features of the bill and urged its rejection. “Pass the bill,” he said, “and what will be the result? Where there should be union, there will be division. Confidence will be impaired — jealousy will arise — matrimonial quarrels will occur — domestic happiness will be lost. The maxim [sic] of the law, that the husband and wife are one, will be no longer true. There will be two heads of the family — two separate interests.” He also opposed the bill because it afforded great facilities to dishonest people for cheating their creditors. According to Josselyn, “the ladies of Mississippi are unanimously opposed to the passage of the bill, a fact which should cause it to be voted down, without division.”

It is an indisputable fact that in Mississippi, a slave state with a paternalistic society, radical reform had been set in motion with the passage of this bill. But it also seems certain that “powerful personal and economic forces must have been present to have overcome the great opposition to its passage.” There should be no doubt about Mrs. Hadley’s influence in the passage of this law. First, her theory that “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” was implemented by the meals she served to the legislators at her boarding house. Second, she exerted a strong influence upon her husband. It would seem that Mr. and Mrs. Hadley were of the same mind and spirit in securing rights for married women and in the protection of their property.

Colonel Hadley was given accolades in several state newspapers for his efforts to secure passage of the bill. The Southern Sun, on February 5, stated that “Colonel Hadley Was entitled to much credit for having originated so salutary an enactment and should this bill become law its good effects will soon manifest themselves in society.” It continued,

There should certainly be some legislative enactment to prevent some unscrupulous husbands, from wantonly squandering the estate vested in them by marriage and bring virtuous wives and helpless children to want and wretchedness. There are also such people in the world as "fortune hunters" — men without morality — without hearts, who are ever prone to deceive and divest women of wealth, that their prodigal hands may be furnished with the pecuniary means of continuing a life of splendid dissipation and degrading indolence. The licentiousness of such men should be checked. They not only disgrace the name of man — they not only sport with the holiest feelings of a women's heart — but they prey upon their victim and their children, the countless miseries of poverty.

In a different article, the same newspaper suggested that Colonel Hadley may have had an ulterior motive for promoting women’s rights:

The Colonel has avowed himself an advocate of the "rights of women," and we being devoted to the gentle sex, (God Bless Them), are especially pleased with this gallant demeanor — (So soon as the ladies are permitted to vote), we have no doubt our Senator will attain another and a higher office than the one he now holds."

But this great divergence from the common law would have to suffice for the time; women’s suffrage would not come for another eighty years.

There is a possibility that Colonel and Mrs. Hadley wanted this law passed to gain control of her estate from her brothers, as the census rolls show the Hadleys no longer living in Hinds County after 1841. In the Hinds County Deeds, at the Raymond Courthouse, a deed shows that T.B.J. Hadley sold to Harriet Wooster of Louisiana all personal property: thirty-five Negroes, all mules, cattle, hogs and furniture, implements, and farming utensils attached to the farm in Hinds County, and located about two miles from Jackson, executed on February 17, 1839, two days after final passage of the Married Women’s Property Act. Also listed in the same deed book, but probably with a discrepant date of December 30, 1837, T.B.J. Hadley and wife, Piety L. Hadley, sold to Joel Hardwick for $1,500, one-half of Lot #3, North, one acre, in the City of Jackson. This was probably the land where their boarding house stood. The deed was signed by both parties.

A family historian reports that between 1840 and 1841, Colonel and Mrs. Hadley migrated to Texas, as did many Mississip-pians at that time, looking for cheap and fertile land and a new frontier. In 1842, Mrs. Hadley’s sister and brother-in-law, Hiram and Obedience Runnels, also moved to Texas. They followed their mother, Mrs. Obedience Smith, who had sold all of her property in 1835 when Major Smith died and moved to the Brazos River Area, somewhere close to present-day Houston. Mr. and Mrs. Hadley purchased property on the north side of the San Felipe Stage Route in Houston, and in 1844, they sold this property and on the same day purchased twenty-five acres including the site of the San Felipe Cottage from Mrs. Hadley’s mother. It seems they all lived in close proximity in a settlement known as the “Smith Compound,” along with the Runnels and were evidently a close family. Mrs. Hadley’s brother-in-law, H.G. Runnels, became a planter in the Brazos River Area and eventually represented Brazoria County in the Texas Convention of 1845, while Texas was still a republic. It is interesting to note that in this convention a provision was made allowing married women property rights.

Thomas Hadley continued to be active politically, serving his county as chief justice and the city of Houston as recorder. Colonel Hadley died September 25, 1869, in Houston, and Mrs. Hadley lived a long life, finally succumbing at age ninety-one, on August 23, 1889. Both are buried in Houston, Texas.

While we may never know all the details and all the reasons that prompted the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act, nonetheless, the fact remains that Mississippi was the first state to radically depart from the common law. This fact is not given its proper prominence in the history of women’s emancipation, which traditionally begins with the passage of the New York Statue of 1848. In Mississippi, major revisions were seen in the law in 1846 and 1857.

After initial passage of the Married Women’s Property Act, the law was expanded several times to give women such ancillary privileges as the right to keep the profits derived from their property, the right to sign contracts or deeds relating to their property, and the right to operate alone without the joint consent of their husbands. The Reconstruction constitution of the state included a provision for married women’s property rights; the J.A.P. Campbell Code of 1880 abolished all the disabilities of coverture; and the Constitution of 1890 raised that protection to the constitutional, rather than the statutory level.

In Radical Reconstruction and the Property Rights of Southern Women, Susan Lebstock makes the following observations:

In hard times a married women's property act became a significant new form of debtor relief. The general demand for debtor relief probably did much to promote the approval of laws, specifically for the protection of the property of married women. A married women's law shielded the husband, while it also shielded the wife; a man who was about to lose his own holdings could rest in the knowledge that in the future his wife’s property would be secure.

It is ironic that in shielding themselves economically, Mississippi men were advancing women’s rights.

Five years would pass before two other states, Michigan and Maine, would give married women control over their property. The Maine law is strikingly similar in content, except for the slavery clauses, to the Mississippi law. Since the Mississippi law was printed in 1840, it may be that newspaper accounts or personal correspondence found its way into some interested legislators’ hands.

The drive of two strong-willed women — one the daughter of an Indian Chief, the other the daughter of an Indian fighter — coalesced with the practical concerns of men to secure the passage of the first law in the nation regarding women’s property rights.

* ~ * ~ *

Footnotes

1 – Eugene A. Hecker, History of Women’s Suffrage (New York, 1910), 200.

2 – Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, ed. C. Vann Woodward (New Haven, 1981), 284.

3 – Joseph G. Baldwin, The Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi: A Series of Sketches (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967, c 1957), 82-9.

4 – John Edmond Gonzales, “Flush Times, Depression, War and Compromise,” in A History of Mississippi, 2 vols. (Jackson, 1973), I, 292

5 – Fisher v. Allen, 2 Howard (Miss.) 611 (1837).

6 – Ibid.

7 – Clarion Ledger, December 26, 1961.

8 – Journal of the Senate of the State of Mississippi (1839).

9 – W.F. Powell, Jackson’s Early History (Jackson, Miss., 1945).

10 – Jackson Jewels, political drawings compiled by Neppie R. Lockwood (Jackson, Miss., n.d.).

11 – Mae Wilson McBee, The Life and Times of David Smith (Greenwood, Miss., 1958).

12 – Mississippi Court Records from the files of the High Court of Errors and Appeals, 1799-1859, compiled by M.L.F. Hendrix, 351-55.

13 – Ibid.

14 – Journal of the Senate of the State of Mississippi (1839), 231.

15 – Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi, January, 1839, p. 233.

16 – Journal of the Senate of the State of Mississippi (1839).

17 – Southern Sun (Jackson, Miss.), February 5, 1839.

18 – Ibid.

19 – Ibid.

20 – Ibid.

21 – Bess Varnado, Jackson, Mississippi, personal correspondence, February 24, 1984.

22 – Ibid.

23 – Elizabeth Gaspar Brown, “Husband and Wife — Memorandum on the Mississippi Woman’s Law of 1839,” Michigan Law Review 42 (1944): 1110.

24 – Journal of the Senate of the State of Mississippi (1839), 99-100.

25 – Ibid.

26 – Since the bill was debated in committee, the proceedings are not reported in the Senate Journal. The following summary of the debate was excerpted from Brown, 1114-16.

27 – Journal of the Senate of the State of Mississippi (1839), 260-61.

28 – Ibid.

29 – Brown, “Husband and Wife,” 1116.

30 – Journal of the Senate of the State of Mississippi; Brown, “Husband and Wife,” 1116.

31 – The Mississippian (Jackson, Mississippi), April 26, 1839.

32 – Ibid.

33 – Brown, “Husband and Wife,” 1118.

34 – Southern Sun (Jackson, Miss.), February 5, 1839.

35 – Ibid.

36 – Ibid.

37 – Mary Jane Lyle, Louisville, Miss., personal correspondence, February 7, 1984.

38 – Jeanette Runnels Espy, San Antonio, Texas, personal correspondence, February 22,1984.

39 – The Baptist Encyclopedia, A Dictionary, ed. Wm. Cathcart (Philadelphia, 1883).

40 – Suzanne D. Lebsock, “Radical Reconstruction and the Property Rights of Southern Women,” Journal of Southern History 43 (May 1977), 195-216.

41 – Brown, “Husband and Wife,” 1120.