Women's Rights in the Wild West?

Find the book Staking Her Claim: Women Homesteading the West, by Marcia Hensley, published by High Plains Press. It's an award-winning book.

Also get Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart. This book is simply letters by this woman to a friend. Fantastic book. It's one of those that when I reached the end, I felt sad because I wanted it to continue.

Great research project!

ETA: Also grab the books about the overland trails. There are MANY that highlight women's journals.

Women could hold property if they were single, but if they were married it was considered household property, and therefore it belonged to her husband, who was the head of the household.

What sort of lifestyle is your character living? Her race, wealth, and location has a lot to do with what opportunities she had available to her.

As Lachel asks, race, exact year, location, and family position make a lot of different here.

Women in Wyoming could vote by 1870 and several other states followed by the end of the century. A single woman could own property, and I believe in Wyoming could hold property separate and distinct from her husband's.

As a practical matter, a woman was unlikely to have the strength to run a farm, although I believe there were a couple of ranches run by women in the 1800s. A younger, single woman would most likely work in town at stores or teach school. Some would marry men who needed a wife to take care of children after their wives had died. Older women might work as household help. Some women became professionals such as doctors and attorneys.

You've added some information since your original post. A woman who was mixed white/Indian was Indian for all intents and purposes. It would be hard for her to have a position that wasn't subserviant, such as a very lowly clerk, prostitute.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

McQueen said:

All I've been able to learn is that women could not hold property and could not vote.

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Tell us what the plot needs.

Women could hold property. I can think of several of my ancestors who bought and sold land, livestock and had businesses between 1860 and 1910. I have journals and biographies that mention women who owned businesses and ranches and farms.

Mississippi in 1839, followed by New York in 1848 and Massachusetts in 1854, passed laws allowing married women to own property separate from their husbands.

You would have to research the laws of the state and/or territory, and Some states allowed women to control property they acquired before4 marriage, some didn't. Some allowed women to control property they acquired by inheritance and/or gift, some didn't.

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http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awlaw3/property_law.html

The Homestead Act of 1862 demonstrates that the federal government did not make gender one of the criteria for homestead ownership, and this concept was adopted by several western states as well:


Sec. 1 . . . head of a family, or who has arrived at the age of twenty-one years, and is a citizen of the United States, . . . shall, from, and after the first January, eighteen hundred and sixty-three, be entitled to enter one quarter section or a less quantity of unappropriated public lands, upon which said person may have filed a preemption claim, or which may, at the time the application is made, be subject to preemption at one dollar and twenty-five cents, or less, per acre; . . . .

Sec. 2: And be it further enacted. . . . upon application to the register of the land office in which he or she is about to make such entry, make affidavit before the said register or receiver that he or she is the head of a family. . .

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Texas in the 19th century, for instance, allowed married women to have more control over their property than many New England states, because of its Spanish and Mexican heritage. Spanish law was less patriarchal then English common law: women had absolute control over dowry and widows inherited a certain % of the deceased's estate, provided they did not remarry sooner than a year after being widowed. Texas and New Mexico were heavily influenced by the Siete Partidas of Spain.

One of my great-grandmother's sisters did homestead as a single woman.

If you're still looking for sources on this topic, I'd check out the New Western Historians. They can help with this question but many others which will probably crop up. Their names are Patricia Nelson Limerick, Donald Worster, Richard White, and William Cronon. I highly recommend reading their books. They provide a rounded and accurate picture of the American West.