The Deed Myth
Adapted from an article first published in
Notable Women Ancestors: The Journal of Women's Genealogy & History
Vol. I, No. 4, Summer, 1999
©1999 Susanne "Sam" Behling (GFSSam@aol.com)
Some bits of advice are often too good to be true, and such is the case in the "deed myth." You may have seen the following quote circulated dozens of times in recent months, both in e-mail lists and in respectable Family or Genealogy Society newsletters:
"In the lower left corner of most old deeds you will find two to four witnesses. The first one is always from the husband's side, the next two from the wife's side. That is to protect her dower rights under the law. Nothing you will ever use will give greater clues to maiden names."
The apparent source of this quote is the Compendium of Historical Sources by Ron Bremer. On page 127 he says:
"Tradition says that the signatures of the first two witnesses will probably be from the husband's side of the family and that the last two signatures will be from the wife's side of the family.
"Hence, if the researcher will make note of all the individuals who sign on the deeds, he will usually find a clue to the wife's maiden name. While this is not positive proof, it is nevertheless a good tool ..."
Mr. Bremer also states that "this principal works about 90 percent of the time in colonial period and the early federal period. It begins to become less effective after the Civil War with the advent of the railroad and the moving of people across the country, often away from their families."
I do not know what deeds Mr. Bremer has been looking at, but any genealogist who has looked at numerous deeds over the years will tell you this statement is simply NOT TRUE!
Myra Vanderpool Gormley, C.G., says unequivocally, "I have examined probably thousands of deeds during my research the past 30 years, most of them pre-Civil War, and I do not find this information at all accurate."
Page 98 of Sharon DeBartolo Carmack's book, A Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your Female Ancestors again says, "It is not true that deeds were witnessed by someone from the wife's side of the family in order to protect her dower."
First of all, there was no need to "protect" a wife's dower rights. ("Dowry" means any land, money, goods or personal property brought by a bride into a marriage. "Dower" is a provision made from a husband's estate for the support of his widow and family, usually one third of the value of the estate, and means real estate only.) Dower rights were laws set up by each State or Colony that protected a woman from an unscrupulous husband leaving her out of his will, or in the case of no will, giving her legal right to a portion (usually one third) or his estate. When a married man sold property, or took a mortgage, the wife had to sign for herself relinquishing her 1/3 interest to the buyer or the mortgagee, otherwise she still had a 1/3 interest in someone else's property. The wife herself could not sell the property, but her husband nor anyone else could sell it without her consent.
So who WERE the witnesses then, if not relatives of the wife? While they conceivably might be her relatives, more often than not, they were neighbors who happened to be in the court house the same day signing their own legal documents. The same holds true today. As a former legal secretary for an estate planning attorney, I have personally signed my own name to hundreds of wills and deeds as a witness, and have no blood connection whatsoever to the transactors of those documents.
It is certainly possible that the "neighbors" were related to the wife, or even to the husband, given the nature of the small populations in towns and inter-marrying before this century, but in this case the relationship is more likely to be that of a cousin rather than an immediate family member. Remember, too, that wives often "removed" with their husbands to other towns or States, away from the wife's blood relatives who then would not have been on hand to witness any deeds. Or the wife may simply have outlived her blood relatives by the time she signed the deed.
The unfortunate conclusion is that the search for the wife's elusive maiden name must continue elsewhere.
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