Feminine Designs, Legal Estates: Elizabeth Allen and the Renovations to Bacon’s Castle

Abstract

VIRGINIA B PRICE C..t:.~t.lt!.. L NOTt.S f> LL " H . ..... - ~o ll..§1\·~g:f~:~f{f~::j~o~~v~N ~l~~t.?~f::~:!~.:~~~~~~t.=~"'· 1 , W.T U~>" U O.' ("NOO , ~. . , '::1...l.> t:l 0\• 1730) ~ ;-\rthur (d. 1743) m. Stith (by 1763) 24 ARRIS I VOLUME TWEN TY 2009 m. E~zabeth Bray (u. 177-t) m. Hannah I ' I. I James ( E TWEI\ - y 2009 documents- the property transfer, the agreement with Smith, and the school trust-shed light on what she valued. From these public documents, we can make inferences as to her private choices about where and ho'v she lived. In 1725, James Bray died, leaving property to his children under the terms of a will. Elizabeth Allen and her brother Thomas Bray then renegotiated aspects of this inheritance from their father. Elizabeth Allen retained rights to a plantation on the Chickahominy River and sold her life rights to another for £500. The siblings entered into a bond for t\vice that amount to formalize their arrangement. 16 vVithin two years, Arthur Allen III died without a will, leaving Elizabeth widowed w-ith two children,James and Catherine. 17 This unfortunate event was significant because it changed Elizabeth Allen's legal status. Colonial Virginia law provided that a married vvoman could not own property or dispose of it without her husband's consent. Nor could a woman enter into a binding contract. A man also controlled all of his wife's personal property after marriage. A husband managed his wife's real property and controlled rents and profits. :Mitigating the legal inequities to the wife were her dov.ver rights in property O\vned with her husband during marriage and her rights to inheritance from her family. Dower rights offered protection to w·idows, who received one-third life rights to real property and, after 1705, a right to stay in the manor house; in Virginia, dower also included personal property . Regarding inheritance, an heiress controlled her family's land as she would her dower, and it could not be sold without her permission. If a couple had no children, on the wife's death, her land reverted to her family. 18 In Elizabeth Allen's case, her husband Arthur Allen would have been the "tenant by courtesy" of the Bray plantation-lifetime manager of her estates on behalf of their children, James and Catherine. 19 vVhen Arthur Allen died, the court appointed her as the administrator of his estate. This meant that Elizabeth Allen now controlled her ovvn inheritance from James Bray~ her dower rights in the marital property, and, as fiduciary, her late husband's estate, which would have passed by law to the couple's minor children. It appears that Elizabeth Allen used the independence temporarily afforded her in widowhood to influence hO\v she and her children would live, particularly as she prepared to marry again. As administrator of Arthur Allen's estate, she segregated her brother's money from that of her husband. She invoked the terms of her father 's will to pass the plantation bequeathed her in 1725 to her daughter in 1740.20 The impetus was Catherine's marriage to Benjamin Cocke. The matrilineal aspect of the bequest suggests that it vvas more than a dowry.1 1 Perhaps it was Elizabeth Allen's attempt to augment her daug·hter's inheritance with a promise of property, something Catherine could identify vvith her own family , rather than that of the Cockes. vVas it a response to her feelings about living among Arthur Allen's extended family for so many years? Or did she simply want her daughter to have land, as well as the personal property like slaves and household goods typically assigned to female children? Nonetheless, it afforded a measure of economic independence for Catherine, something that came late in Elizabeth's own marriage to Arthur. By 1730, Elizabeth Allen was remarried to Arthur Smith IV of Isle of \Vight County.22 They had one son, who drowned in 1743.23 Her sonJames Allen died not long afterwards.24 In all likelihood, her daughter Catherine was dead in 1749 when the...