Cornelia Hughes Dayton's Books

Women Before the Bar

Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789

By: Cornelia Hughes Dayton

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Women Before the Bar

Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789

By: Cornelia Hughes Dayton

Women before the Bar is the first study to investigate changing patterns of women's participation in early American courts across a broad range of legal actions--including proceedings related to debt, divorce, illicit sex, rape, and slander. Weaving the stories of individual women together with systematic analysis of gendered litigation patterns, Cornelia Dayton argues that women's relation to the courtroom scene in early New England shifted from one of integration in the mid-seventeenth century to one of marginality by the eve of the Revolution. Using the court records of New Haven, which originally had the most Puritan-dominated legal regime of all the colonies, Dayton argues that Puritanism's insistence on godly behavior and communal modes of disputing initially created unusual opportunities for women's voices to be heard within the legal system. But women's presence in the courts declined significantly over time as Puritan beliefs lost their status as the organizing principles of society, as legal practice began to adhere more closely to English patriarchal models, as the economy became commercialized, and as middle-class families developed an ethic of privacy. By demonstrating that the early eighteenth century was a crucial locus of change in law, economy, and gender ideology, Dayton's findings argue for a reconceptualization of women's status in colonial New England and for a new periodization of women's history.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

401

Publisher

UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807838241

ISBN 13

9780807838242

Women Before the Bar

Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789

By: Cornelia Hughes Dayton

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Women Before the Bar

Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789

By: Cornelia Hughes Dayton

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

401

Publisher

UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807838241

ISBN 13

9780807838242

Robert Love's Warnings

Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston

By: Cornelia H. Dayton,Sharon V. Salinger

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Robert Love's Warnings

Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston

By: Cornelia H. Dayton,Sharon V. Salinger

In colonial America, the system of "warning out" was distinctive to New England, a way for a community to regulate those to whom it would extend welfare. Robert Love's Warnings animates this nearly forgotten aspect of colonial life, richly detailing the moral and legal basis of the practice and the religious and humanistic vision of those who enforced it. Historians Cornelia H. Dayton and Sharon V. Salinger follow one otherwise obscure town clerk, Robert Love, as he walked through Boston's streets to tell sojourners, "in His Majesty's Name," that they were warned to depart the town in fourteen days. This declaration meant not that newcomers literally had to leave, but that they could not claim legal settlement or rely on town poor relief. Warned youths and adults could reside, work, marry, or buy a house in the city. If they became needy, their relief was paid for by the province treasurer. Warning thus functioned as a registration system, encouraging the flow of labor and protecting town coffers. Between 1765 and 1774, Robert Love warned four thousand itinerants, including youthful migrant workers, demobilized British soldiers, recently exiled Acadians, and women following the redcoats who occupied Boston in 1768. Appointed warner at age sixty-eight owing to his unusual capacity for remembering faces, Love kept meticulous records of the sojourners he spoke to, including where they lodged and whether they were lame, ragged, drunk, impudent, homeless, or begging. Through these documents, Dayton and Salinger reconstruct the biographies of travelers, exploring why so many people were on the move throughout the British Atlantic and why they came to Boston. With a fresh interpretation of the role that warning played in Boston's civic structure and street life, Robert Love's Warnings reveals the complex legal, social, and political landscape of New England in the decade before the Revolution.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

273

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812206320

ISBN 13

9780812206326

Book's by Cornelia Hughes Dayton

Women Before the Bar

Women Before the Bar

Women Before the Bar

Women Before the Bar

Robert Love's Warnings

Robert Love's Warnings

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email