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The Daughters of Rural Massachusetts University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 1995 The ad ughters of rural Massachusetts :: women and autonomy, 1800-1860/ Glendyne R. Wergland University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses Wergland, Glendyne R., "The ad ughters of rural Massachusetts :: omew n and autonomy, 1800-1860/" (1995). Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014. 2073. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/2073 This thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE DAUGHTERS OF RURAL MASSACHUSETTS WOMEN AND AUTONOMY, 1800-1860 A Thesis Presented by GLENDYNE R. WERGLAND Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS February 1995 Department of History ° Copyright by Glendyne R. Wergland 1995 All Rights Reserved THE DAUGHTERS OF RURAL MASSACHUSETTS WOMEN AND AUTONOMY, 1800-1860 A Thesis Presented by GLENDYNE R. WERGLAND Approved as to style and content by: Bruce Laurie, Chair Winfr/^d E.A. Bernhard, Member Barry Levy, Member Bruce Laurie, Department Head History Department ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my appreciation to the number of people who made this thesis a reality. First, Bruce Laurie, my advisor and thesis committee chairman, asked questions and suggested alternate lines of reasoning when I thought I had reached an impasse with the material. Winfred E.A. Bernhard, in whose seminar this study was first born, provided encouragement throughout the process. Barry Levy, the third member of my thesis committee, added considerably to my understanding of the possibilities of quantification. Judy Ruttenberg, my sister teaching assistant, read the manuscript and offered suggestions. My daughters, Jennifer Wergland and Karyn Wergland, proofread portions. As the most recent of a long line of this family's stubborn and independent women who sought to maximize their own autonomy in a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle ways, they have been a continuing source of inspiration. They reminder me that all women, whether or not they are wives or sisters, are daughters first. through his Last but never least, my husband, Gerald Pendleton Wergland, generous support, made all this possible. iv ABSTRACT THE DAUGHTERS OF RURAL MASSACHUSETTS WOMEN AND AUTONOMY, 1800-1860 FEBRUARY 1995 GLENDYNE R. WERGLAND, B.A., MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Bruce Laurie This study addresses a series of questions about household demographics, property ownership, testation, and employment changes that benefited women by increasing their potential for autonomy in rural western Massachusetts from 1800 to 1860. Increasing numbers of women headed their own households and appeared on tax lists as single women and widows. Women also inherited real estate from both women and men. Single women favored women as their primary beneficiaries. In the provisions to 1830s testators sharply increased bequests with "sole and separate use" -- of the protect married women's separate property well in advance of the passage showed a Massachusetts Married Women's Property Act of 1855. In addition, fathers mid-nineteenth century, slight favoritism for their daughters in bequests during the numbers of women when more and more heirs had emigrated west. As increasing women's property owned property, there was increasing commentary linking ownership with the right to vote. v PREFACE It was perhaps 1954 when I realized that women lived in a different world than men. At age six, I knew that women spoke a different language among themselves, and that men did not speak the same language. The faces women presented to each other were not the masks they put on in front of their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons. Feminine reality was a fuller, more supportive reality than what I could see of men's reality. But perhaps that was because men wore masks of their own. My paternal great-grandmother, Gertrude Smith Cosper, was one of six daughters. She had one son and four daughters, including my grandmother, Gertrude Elizabeth Cosper Beemer Weber. My grandmother and her sisters were so close that on the occasional Christmas when her husband had to work over the holiday, she would leave him behind in Oklahoma and travel half a day to Texas to be with her sisters. My maternal grandmother, Bessie Irene Heller Goin, also came from a great- family of sisters with only one brother. Both grandmothers and all my paternal aunts enjoyed the company of women. When they were roistering in the kitchen intimate - until cleaning up after the holiday feasts, conversation would be lively and presence of any men. I a man entered the room. They curbed their tongues in the communication, more could see for myself that among them there was more community of women. That cooperation, and less competition. They were, in fact, a gathering of women who are on intimate sort of community can be seen today at any me, the intimacy of women is little terms. To judge from what my grandmother told vi different today than it was in the 1880s when my great-grandmother was growing up with her five sisters in rural West Virginia. These women allowed me into their lives from earliest childhood. They taught me more than domestic skills; they also taught me how to be a woman, and how much or how little I could expect from other women or men. Though they appeared to my child's eyes as "domestic beings," all of them were employed, most of them throughout their adult lives. My mother, Dolores Goin Beemer Canfield taught school. My grandmother and godmother were hairdressers. Another great-aunt was a secretary-bookkeeper, and yet another was the accountant for what grew into a multimillion dollar family business. My pious, meek maternal grandmother worked in a munitions factory during World War II, packing hand grenades. But I saw them only at home, where they showed themselves unmasked to me. This is why, when I saw evidence in the federal census of women without men in their households, I recognized the fact that some women's comfort factor is immeasurably higher when men are not present. Women who banded together in their own enclaves did more than preserve their independence. They maintained a bond with other women, a bond which could have been damaged by men. They lived with with each other in a greater sense of equality than would have been possible men. And some of those women secured their personal safety from men who abused known to abuse women. them in the appalling and varied ways that men have been afford housing that none could afford Whether it was because together women could nursing care to each other, or separately, or because they needed or could offer children in widowhood, or needed the help of a friend or kinswoman in raising • • Vll because they were financially dependent, or simply because they preferred each others' company to that of men, this much is historic fact: women banded together to form feminine households. For those women, the search for autonomy depended on help from other women. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . ABSTRACT PREFACE LIST OF CHARTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION 1 Questions Asked 8 Rationale 9 Sample Towns 11 Definitions 14 2. DEMOGRAPHICS OF FEMALE PROPERTY OWNERS 19 Marital Status 20 Type of Property Owned 21 Race 22 Age 24 Singlehood in Massachusetts 27 Ratio of Males to Females 27 Education 29 Patterns of Settlement 32 Social Activism 33 35 3. QUESTIONING MARRIAGE AS A DESIRABLE STATE What Women Wrote and Read Portraiture ix 4. CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN'S LANDOWNERSHIP 67 Comparison of Landownership Levels 68 Widows as Landowners 72 Western Massachusetts Widows 78 Western Massachusetts Daughters as Heirs 84 Persistence gg 5. MASSACHUSETTS MARRIED WOMEN'S PROPERTY LAW .... 91 Common Law 93 Dower Law 94 Equity 97 Passage of Massachusetts' Married Women's Property Acts 101 Tax Protests 112 6. FEMALE-HEADED HOUSEHOLDS 116 Gender Ratio 116 Householders not Necessarily Landowners 122 Occupations 123 Employees and Entrepreneurs 124 Interdependency and Dependents 137 Farm owners 142 Beyond the Bonds of Womanhood: Susan Dunham 153 7. BERKSHIRE COUNTY WOMEN'S WILLS 160 Testators' Real Estate Ownership 162 Bequest Patterns 168 Women 168 Men 176 Sole and Separate Use Provisions 180 8. CONCLUSION 184 x APPENDICES 192 A. CENSUS VS. TAX ASSESSORS' LISTS 193 B. METHODOLOGY 195 Tax Records 195 Women's Wills 197 BIBLIOGRAPHY 198 xi LIST OF CHARTS Chart Page 1. Western Massachusetts Sample Towns 13 2. Women and Landownership in Western Massachusetts 1800-1850 17 3. Marital Status of Female Berkshire County Testators 21 4. Age of Female Landowners and Heads-of-Households 25 5. Ratio of Massachusetts' Adult Males to Female, 1 850 27 6. Literacy of Female Testators, Berkshire County 31 7. Comparison of Landownership Levels: Female and Male 69 8. Real Wealth and Age of 1850 Female Landowners 74 9. Marital Status of Landowning Testators 1800-1860 75 10. Persistence of Female Taxpayers 1800-1820 89 11. Population in Female-Headed Households, 1800-1860 117 12. Gender Balance in Households Headed by Women 118 13. Occupations of Dal ton Women, 1860 128 131 14. Berkshire Businesswomen with Credit Ratings, 1840-1870 148 15. Butter Production: Men's and Women's Farms, 1850 161 16. Berkshire County Wills, 1780-1860 1780-1860 163 17. Property Ownership by Female Testators, Testators, 1830-1860 165 18. Landownership Levels by Female Compared with 75 Males' 167 19.
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