Her Act And Deed

Deeds, wills, divorce decrees, and other evidence of the public lives of nineteenth-century women belie the long-held beliefs of their public invisibility. Angela Boswell's Her Act and Deed: Women's Lives in a Rural Southern County, 1837-1873 follows the threads of Southern women's lives as they weave through the public records of one Texas county during the middle of the nineteenth century. Her unique approach to exploring women's roles in a South that spanned the frontier, antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction eras illuminates the truths of the feminine world of those periods, and her analysis of this set of complete public records for those years challenges the theory of men's and women's separate spheres of influence, as advanced by many scholars. The world Boswell reconstructs allows readers a more egalitarian, multicultural look at life: working class and poor women, both black and white, join their more affluent sisters in the pages of the Colorado County, Texas, courthouse records. Those same records reveal that the men of that world--most of them planters or farmers, the majority of them owning at least a few slaves--are a force for women to reckon with, both in public and at home. The almost constant presence of men in the home and their need to uphold the dominant, slave-holding hierarchy produced a patriarchy more pervasive than that experienced by women in the urban north. Eminently readable and accessible to scholars and general readers alike, Her Act and Deed represents a welcome addition to the classroom, to the scholar's library, and to Texas history collections.

Excerpt from A Treatise on the Law of Deeds, Vol. 2 of 3: Their Form, Requisites, Execution, Acknowledgment, Registration, Construction and Effect; Covering the Alienation of Title to Real Property by Voluntary Transfer; Together With Chapters on Tax Deeds and Sheriff's Deeds In Mason v. Brock, supra, the court say: A married woman can be divested only of her real estate in the mode prescribed by statute. In Martin v. Dwelly, 6 Wend. 9, 21 Am. Dec. 245, Mr. J ustice Sutherland says: By the common law a feme covert could not, by uniting With her husband in any deed or conveyance, bar herself or her heirs of any es tate of which she was seised in her own right. Or of her right of dower in the real estate of her husband. This disability is supposed to be founded on the principle that the separate legal existence of the wife is suspended during the marriage, and is strengthened by the considera tion that, from the nature of the connection, there is danger that the influence of the husband may be improperly exerted, for the purpose of forcing the Wife to part with her rights in his favor. The law, therefore, considers any such deed or conveyance as the act of the husband only, although the wife may have united in it, and restrained its Operation to the husband's interest in the premises, and gives to it the same effect as though he alone had executed the conveyance. The only mode in which a feme covert could, at common law, convey her real estate was by unit ing with her husband in levying a fine. This is a solemn proceeding of record in the face of the court, and the judges are supposed to watch over and protect the rights of the wife, and to ascertain by a private ex amination that her participation in the act is voluntary and uncon strained. This is the principle upon Which the efficacy of a fine is put by most of the authorities; 3 Cru. Dig. 153, tit. 35, c. 10; 2 Inst. 510 1 Vent. 121 a. But whatever may be the foundation of the doctrine, it is now fully established. Our statute declares that no estate of afema covert residing in this State shall pass by her deed without a previous acknowledgment made by her before a proper officer, apart from her husband, that she executed such deed freely, without fear or compulsion of her husband: 1 Rev. Laws, 369. This provision, it will be observed, is an enlargement, and not a restraint, of the common-law powers of a feme covert. It authorizes a less formal mode of conveyance than was known to the common law. It gives to her deed, when duly acknowl edged, the same power and effect as a fine; but, if not acknowledged according to the directions of the statute, it declares that no estate shall pass by it. It leaves it as it would have stood at the common law, if the statute had never been passed, absolutely void and inoperative. But see Hawes v. Mann, 8 Rise. 21. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This illustrated children’s book celebrates the extraordinary potential of ordinary deeds—showing how one child’s act of kindness can change the world One ordinary day, Ordinary Mary stumbles upon some ordinary blueberries. When she decides to pick them for her neighbor, Mrs. Bishop, her thoughtful act starts a chain reaction that multiplies around the world. Mrs. Bishop makes blueberry muffins and gives them to her paperboy and four others—one of whom is Mr. Stevens, who then helps five different people with their luggage—one of whom is Maria, who then helps five other people—and so on, until the deed comes back to Mary.