The Legal Status of Women in Early America: A Reappraisal

In 1930 Richard B. Morris published Studies in the History of American Law: With Special Reference to the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The monograph included a chapter on the legal status of colonial women that became extremely influential within a short time of its appearance. Morris's influence continues half a century later. Several books published in 1980 cite him as one of their primary authorities on women's rights: Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect & Ideology in Revolutionary America; Lyle Koehler, A Search for Power: The ‘Weaker Sex’ in Seventeenth-Century New England; and Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800. Other influential books and articles also rely heavily on Morris, including A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony by John Demos, ‘The Illusion of Change: Women and the American Revolution,’ by Joan Hoff Wilson, and ‘The Lady and the Mill Girl: Changes in the Status of Women in the Age of Jackson, 1800–1840,’ by Gerda Lerner. In fact, almost every published sentence on women's rights in early American law is followed by a footnote citing chapter three of Studies in the History of American Law. In The Bonds of Womanhood (1977), Nancy F. Cott declared that Morris's chapter ‘has become the standard essay on colonial women under the common law.’