|
|
Prenuptial agreement, Elizabeth [Murray] Smith and Ralph Inman, 24 September 1771, J. M. Robbins Papers, Courtesy, Massachusetts Historical Society When Elizabeth [Murray] Smith prepared to marry for the third time, her circumstances were strikingly different from those before either of her previous marriages. Now, at 45, she was a very wealthy widow. She had also taken on some significant financial responsibilities toward her brother John’s family. Before marrying Ralph Inman, whom she had known since her earliest years in Boston, she signed a prenuptial agreement with him. Similar to the agreement she had signed with second husband James Smith, this one protected the property she brought to the marriage and secured her right to dispose of her own property as she saw fit. Such provisions served to cancel the loss of legal rights that marriage brought to colonial women. For more on Elizabeth Murray’s marriages, see Patricia Cleary, Elizabeth Murray: A Woman’s Pursuit of Independence in Eighteenth-Century America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000). On Elizabeth Murray’s prenuptial agreements, see Mary Beth Norton, “A Cherished Spirit of Independence: The Life of an Eighteenth-Century Boston Businesswoman.” In Women of America: A History, ed. Carol Ruth Berkin and Mary Beth Norton, 48-67. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979; on women and legal issues in the colonial period, see Marylynn Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
|
||
|
|||
Prenuptial agreement, Elizabeth [Murray] Smith and Ralph Inman, 24 September 1771, J. M. Robbins Papers, Courtesy, Massachusetts Historical Society. Page 1
See 