Colonial American Women and the Law -- Judy Russell

Jane E. Wilcox welcomes The Legal Genealogist Judy Russell as she talks about womens rights in the major legal systems in Colonial America. What rights under the law did our grandmothers have in the Dutch, British, French and Spanish colonies in North America? Were the laws different for single women, married women and widows? Where can we look for the documents during these periods, and where can we learn how to interpret them? Judy Russell is a genealogist with a law degree and blogs as The Legal Genealogist. She has a bachelor's degree in political science and journalism from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and a law degree from Rutgers School of Law-Newark. She has worked as a newspaper reporter, trade association writer, legal investigator, defense attorney, federal prosecutor, law editor and, for more than 20 years she has been an adjunct member of the faculty at Rutgers Law School. Find Judy at http://legalgenealogist.com. Images: Petition of Jean Baptiste Faucon Dumanoir, who upon learning that his son-in-law, Lieut. Joseph Chauvin de Lery, has been killed by savages, prays for the convocation of a family meeting to elect a curator to the minor widow, and a tutor and under-tutor to the unborn child. Petitioner also prays for an order to take inventory. 21 Feb 1738. Louisiana Digital Archive. Whelply vs Blackman, Wilcockson, and Rice, 24 May 1656. Records of the Particular Court of Connecticut, Connecticut State Library, Hartford.

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