Her Act and Deed: Women's Lives in a Rural Southern County, 1837-1873

204 Pages·2001·1.37 MB·English

by  Angela Boswell

c h a p t e r 2
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H e r Ac t and D e e d
Number Three:
Sam Rayburn Series on Rural Life
sponsored by texas a&m u n ivers it y – commerce
james a . gr imshaw, j r . , gener al ed itor
a n g e l a b o s w e l l
H e r Ac t and D e e d
S
Women’s Lives in a
Rural Southern County,
i837– i873
texas a&m university press
college station
Copyright © 2001 by Angela Boswell
Manufactured in the United States of America
All rights reserved
First edition
The paper used in this book meets the minimum require-
ments of the American National Standard for Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, z39.48-1984. Binding
materials have been chosen for durability.
䊊⬁
library of congress
cataloging-in-publication data
Boswell, Angela, 1965–
Her act and deed : women’s lives in a rural southern county,
1837–1873 / Angela Boswell.—1st ed.
p. cm. — (Sam Rayburn series on rural life ; no. 3)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 1-58544-128-7
1. Rural women—Texas— Colorado County—History—
19th century. 2. Colorado County (Tex.)—Rural conditions.
I. Title. II. Series.
hq1438. t4 b67 2001
305.42⬘09764⬘253091734 —dc21
2001000707
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C o n t e n t s
List of Tables vii
Series Editor’s Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 3
chapter 1 12
Women, Work, Family, and Law on the Frontier
chapter 2 31
To Find a New Husband: The End of Marriages on the Frontier
chapter 3 54
Settling Up: The Ascendance of Antebellum Society
chapter 4 79
The Law of the Master: Slave Women
chapter 5 92
Civil War
chapter 6 106
Long-Awaited Peace: Reconstructing Society
Epilogue 129
appendix a 133
Widows and Administration
appendix b 134
Divorces Filed and Granted by Gender and Era
appendix c 135
Grounds for Divorce by Gender and Era
Notes 137 Bibliography 175 Index 185
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Ta b l e s
1. Frontier Widows Administering Estates or
Executing Provisions of Wills, by Wealth 40
2. German and Southern Population Increase 58
3. Antebellum Widows Administering Estates or
Executing Provisions of Wills, by Wealth 71
4. Widows and Their Deceased Husbands’ Estates, by Wealth 100
5. Reconstruction Widows Administering Estates or
Executing Provisions of Wills, by Wealth 121
6. Percentages of Grounds Alleged in Petitions by Women 127
appendix a. Widows and Administration 133
appendix b. Divorces Filed and Granted by Gender and Era 134
appendix c. Grounds for Divorce by Gender and Era 135
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S e r i e s E d i t o r ’s Fo r e wo rd
Her Act and Deed: Women’s Lives in a Rural Southern County, 1837–187i3s the
third book in the Sam Rayburn Series on Rural Life, a series established on the
Texas A&M University–Commerce campus under the auspices of the Texas
A&M University Press book-publishing program. Designed to be diverse in
scope of topics, the series focuses on the eastern half of Texas and the sur-
rounding region. Angela Boswell has written a compelling account about the
nature and place of women in Colorado County in the nineteenth century, a
time frame that touches on the frontier, antebellum, and reconstruction eras
in the South.
Boswell captures the cultural mix of Spanish heritage, German immigrants,
and southern ideals in her snapshots of the political, economic, religious, fa-
milial, legal, slave, and Civil War involvement of women in this small rural
community. Her research in the county records and local newspapers and in
diaries and private letters affords valuable insights into the role of women,
African American and white, during this transitional, formative period of the
region.
Still affected by the southern values, traditions, and myths of the Old South,
Colorado County settlers homesteaded on a frontier where customs and man-
ners had to be redefined. In the middle of the century, women who moved with
their families endured the well-chronicled hardships of frontier life, shared
in the unrelenting toil, and still remained under patriarchal domination. And
as southerners in general continued to seek their identity, so women sought
their own identity. Their searches are, in some ways, the same search. Boswell
provides specific cases to illustrate women’s quests for legal rights and their
struggles against physically and mentally abusive husbands. Her findings un-
derscore the dominant metaphor identified by Louise Cowan in John Crowe
Ransom’s poetry: “the victimization of women” and the southern myth of
womanhood.
The German immigrants in Colorado County faced similar frontier hard-
ships. And their cultural differences were soon melded into a bouillabaisse of
German-southern-Texan culture. Over time second generations of Texas Ger