A Timeline of
Women's Legal History in the United States
by Professor Cunnea
This webpage contains a history of significant events for women in the United States
regarding their experience with the law: using it, making it, practicing it as a profession,
profiting or suffering from it. It ranges from 1619 to the present, covering jury rights,
voting rights, marriage rights, the right of a woman to pass on the status of free or slave
to her children, the right of a woman to control her own body, the right of a woman to
choose her own profession -- particularly the profession of law or lawmaker.
The version placed on this site in March, 1998, is based on a timeline specialized to
show key events in the history of the Women's Law and Public Policy Fellowship at
Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. To see the current Georgetown version,
click here. Thanks are due to the Fellowship Program for making this project possible
and enjoyable!
The page is new and still evolving. Anyone with corrections or suggestions should write
to Professor Cunnea (who is not at Georgetown!) This timeline is copyrighted. Anyone
intending to publish more than 100 words needs to get permission, and students
quoting from it should provide appropriate attribution. Webmistresses or webmasters
from non-commercial sites may link to it freely without prior permission. Commercial
sites must request permission!
Planned additions: more on the founding of significant women's organizations;
bibliography of sources, links to other timelines affecting women; links to biography
sites; links to relevant cases. Someday. Not now. But Real Soon Now!
The Centuries: 17th 18th 19th 20th
The Seventeenth Century
1619 A proposal to give women an equal portion in colonial lands is rejected by the
Virginia House of Burgesses.
1638 Margaret Brent, the first woman lawyer in America, arrives in the Colony of
Maryland. She was involved in over 100 court cases in Maryland and Virginia, and was
a major landowner as well. Governor Calvert chooses her as the executor of his Will. As
such, and separately on her own behalf as a major landowner, in 1648 she formally
demands a "vote and voyce" in the Maryland Assembly -- two votes, in fact. The new
Governor, Thomas Green, denies her request.
, 1655 Elizabeth Key, a slave, sues for her freedom in Virginia based on the the
argument that her station in life should be determined by her father, a free white, rather
than her mother, a slave. Her attorney, William Greensted, wins the case and marries
her. Virginia reacts in 1662 by legislating that children's status is determined by the
mother's condition, slave or free.
1692 In Salem, Massachusetts, fourteen women and six men are executed during the
witch panic. Several others, including children, die in prison while awaiting trial on
witchcraft charges. The panic spreads until a female relative of a colonial governor is
accused, at which point the elite of the colonies begin to reconsider the wisdom of the
prosecutions.
The Eighteenth Century
1745 In Pennsylvania, frontierswoman and poet Susanna Wright becomes a
prothonotary of the colony, enhancing her stature as a legal counselor to her mostly
illiterate neighbors, for whom she prepares wills, deeds, indentures and other contracts.
She also serves as an arbitrator in property disputes.
1764 American patriot pamphleteer James Otis compares the submission of the
modern citizenry to the colonial agreements made by previous generations to the legal
submission of women to men, and argues that both classes ought have the right to
make their own compacts: "Are not women born as free as men? Would it not be
infamous to assert that the ladies are all slaves by nature?"
1765 Jenny Slew, a mixed-race woman about 46 years old, sues as a spinster in
Massachusetts after being kidnapped and enslaved in 1762. Through counsel, she
argues that because her mother was white, she is not subject to enslavement. She
loses at trial and wins on appeal, despite her opponent's claim that her past marriages
to slave men make her a femme covert with no right to sue in her own name at all,
whether slave or free. Ironically, she may have escaped the civil oblivion common to
married women at that time due to a 1706 anti-miscegenation statue forbidding
interracial marriages. Future president John Adams observes one of the proceedings
and notes it in his diary.
1775 Prior to publishing his famed pamphlet "Common Sense," Thomas Paine
proposes women's rights in an article for Pennsylvania Magazine.
1776 Abigail Adams, wife of future U.S. President John Adams, writes him an
impassioned note: "[I]n the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for
you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and
favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands
of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticular care
and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will
not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or Representation."
After a mocking response in which John calls her "saucy" and claims "[w]e know better
Women's Legal History in the United States
by Professor Cunnea
This webpage contains a history of significant events for women in the United States
regarding their experience with the law: using it, making it, practicing it as a profession,
profiting or suffering from it. It ranges from 1619 to the present, covering jury rights,
voting rights, marriage rights, the right of a woman to pass on the status of free or slave
to her children, the right of a woman to control her own body, the right of a woman to
choose her own profession -- particularly the profession of law or lawmaker.
The version placed on this site in March, 1998, is based on a timeline specialized to
show key events in the history of the Women's Law and Public Policy Fellowship at
Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. To see the current Georgetown version,
click here. Thanks are due to the Fellowship Program for making this project possible
and enjoyable!
The page is new and still evolving. Anyone with corrections or suggestions should write
to Professor Cunnea (who is not at Georgetown!) This timeline is copyrighted. Anyone
intending to publish more than 100 words needs to get permission, and students
quoting from it should provide appropriate attribution. Webmistresses or webmasters
from non-commercial sites may link to it freely without prior permission. Commercial
sites must request permission!
Planned additions: more on the founding of significant women's organizations;
bibliography of sources, links to other timelines affecting women; links to biography
sites; links to relevant cases. Someday. Not now. But Real Soon Now!
The Centuries: 17th 18th 19th 20th
The Seventeenth Century
1619 A proposal to give women an equal portion in colonial lands is rejected by the
Virginia House of Burgesses.
1638 Margaret Brent, the first woman lawyer in America, arrives in the Colony of
Maryland. She was involved in over 100 court cases in Maryland and Virginia, and was
a major landowner as well. Governor Calvert chooses her as the executor of his Will. As
such, and separately on her own behalf as a major landowner, in 1648 she formally
demands a "vote and voyce" in the Maryland Assembly -- two votes, in fact. The new
Governor, Thomas Green, denies her request.
, 1655 Elizabeth Key, a slave, sues for her freedom in Virginia based on the the
argument that her station in life should be determined by her father, a free white, rather
than her mother, a slave. Her attorney, William Greensted, wins the case and marries
her. Virginia reacts in 1662 by legislating that children's status is determined by the
mother's condition, slave or free.
1692 In Salem, Massachusetts, fourteen women and six men are executed during the
witch panic. Several others, including children, die in prison while awaiting trial on
witchcraft charges. The panic spreads until a female relative of a colonial governor is
accused, at which point the elite of the colonies begin to reconsider the wisdom of the
prosecutions.
The Eighteenth Century
1745 In Pennsylvania, frontierswoman and poet Susanna Wright becomes a
prothonotary of the colony, enhancing her stature as a legal counselor to her mostly
illiterate neighbors, for whom she prepares wills, deeds, indentures and other contracts.
She also serves as an arbitrator in property disputes.
1764 American patriot pamphleteer James Otis compares the submission of the
modern citizenry to the colonial agreements made by previous generations to the legal
submission of women to men, and argues that both classes ought have the right to
make their own compacts: "Are not women born as free as men? Would it not be
infamous to assert that the ladies are all slaves by nature?"
1765 Jenny Slew, a mixed-race woman about 46 years old, sues as a spinster in
Massachusetts after being kidnapped and enslaved in 1762. Through counsel, she
argues that because her mother was white, she is not subject to enslavement. She
loses at trial and wins on appeal, despite her opponent's claim that her past marriages
to slave men make her a femme covert with no right to sue in her own name at all,
whether slave or free. Ironically, she may have escaped the civil oblivion common to
married women at that time due to a 1706 anti-miscegenation statue forbidding
interracial marriages. Future president John Adams observes one of the proceedings
and notes it in his diary.
1775 Prior to publishing his famed pamphlet "Common Sense," Thomas Paine
proposes women's rights in an article for Pennsylvania Magazine.
1776 Abigail Adams, wife of future U.S. President John Adams, writes him an
impassioned note: "[I]n the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for
you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and
favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands
of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticular care
and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will
not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or Representation."
After a mocking response in which John calls her "saucy" and claims "[w]e know better
