Crawford County, Pennsylvania


Courthouse
PETITIONS OF MARRIED WOMEN
© Thomas L. Yoset
LISTING   ·   INTRODUCTION   ·   ABSTRACTS

    Married women in Pennsylvania were granted the right to control their separate estates by a statute enacted in 1848,1 although only if that right was not otherwise restricted.2  The state’s highest court decided in 1872 that a woman’s separate earnings remained the property of her husband,3 unless she qualified as a feme sole trader.4  The legislature responded by passing an act “Securing to married women their separate earnings.”5  The purposes of that act, and the requirement that a woman be registered at the court house to claim its benefits, were set forth as follows:
    Section 1.  … That the separate earnings of any married woman of the state of Pennsylvania, whether said earnings shall be as wages for labor, salary, property, business or otherwise, shall accrue to and inure to the separate benefit and use of said married woman, and be under the control of such married woman independently of her husband, and so as not to be subject to any legal claim of such husband, or to the claims of any creditor or creditors of such husband, the same as if such married woman were a feme sole ….

    Section 2.  That to prevent any fraudulent practices under this act, before any married woman shall be entitled to its benefits, she shall first present her petition, under oath or affirmation, to the court of common pleas of the city or county where she resides, stating her intention of thereafter claiming the benefits of this act; whereupon the said court shall direct her petition aforesaid to be marked, filed, and to be recorded in the office for recording deeds for such city or county; and such record shall be conclusive evidence of the right of such married woman to the benefit of the first section of this act.
    Petitioner Caroline R Laman obtained the following illustrative decree:
    And now, to wit April 9th AD 1883 the foregoing petition presented in open Court and upon consideration thereof it is ordered by the Court that the same be filed and a record thereof made in this Court, and that the same together with this order be recorded in the Office for recording deeds of this county.  And it is further ordered that the petitioner Caroline R Laman shall hereafter be entitled to the benefits of the Act of Assembly … approved April 3rd 1872, and that hereafter the separate earnings of the petitioner Caroline R Laman, whether said earnings shall be as wages for labor, salary, property, business, or otherwise, shall accrue to and inure to the separate benefit and use of the said Caroline R Laman, independently of her husband John J. Laman and so as not to be subject to any legal claim of her said husband or to the claims of any creditor or creditors of her said husband, the same as if the said Caroline R Laman were a feme sole.  Per Cur[iam, i.e., by the Court].
    Abstracted here are the ninety-two petitions presented prior to 1906 in the Crawford County Court of Common Pleas.6,7  Seventy-nine of the petitions and orders were recorded in the Office of the Recorder of Deeds in a book titled “Records of Petitions of Married Women,” hereafter M.W.Bk.  After recording, the documents were apparently often returned to the petitioner or her attorney, for many are missing from common pleas records, as noted in the abstracts by “[no papers].”  The abstracts were made from the recorded versions and appearance docket entries wherever the court papers could not be located (in attic storage).8

1  Act of 11 April 1848 (P.L. 536, No. 372), õõ 6-11.

2  That statute reads:

1863 Pamphlet Laws 212
Act of April 1, 1863, P.L. 212, No. 225
A  Supplement
To the act to secure the rights of married women, passed the eleventh day of April, Anno Domini one thousand eight hundred and forty-eight.
    SECTION 1.  Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in General Assembly met, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That the true intent and meaning of the act of assembly to secure the rights of married women, passed the eleventh day of April, Anno Domini one thousand eight hundred and forty-eight, and the supplements thereto, are hereby declared to be, that no judgment obtained against the husband of any married woman, before or during marriage, shall bind, or be a lien upon her real estate, or upon any interest the husband may be entitled to therein as tenant by the curtesy.

3  Speakman’s Appeal, 71 Pa. 25, 29 (7 Feb. 1872) (probably dictum).

4  See Black v. Tricker, 59 Pa. 13, 17 (1868).  See generally “Feme Sole Traders.“

5  Act of 3 April 1872 (P.L. 35, No. 24).

6  The petitions, listed here in alphabetical order, were located by examining the appearance docket (“App. Dk.”) summaries for all nineteenth-century common pleas court cases.

7  Women continued petitioning through at least 1929, despite passage of the Married Persons Property Act of 3 June 1887 (P.L. 224, No. 332), which proclaimed that “property of every kind [except real estate] owned, acquired or earned by a woman, before or during her marriage, shall belong to her and not to her husband, or his creditors.”  (The 1887 act was repealed and replaced by the similar Act of 8 June 1893 (1893 P.L. 344, No. 284)).

8  One petition (Zeller) was found among miscellaneous papers in the Recorder’s basement storage area.