Their Lives, Their Wills: Women in the Borderlands, 1750–1846. By Amy M. Porter.

Abstract

Their Lives, Their Wills: Women in the Borderlands, 1750–1846 . Women, Gender, and the West Series. By Amy M. Porter. Foreword by Nancy E. Baker . (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2015. xvii + 193 pp. Tables, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95, paper.) T heir Lives, Their Wills is a comprehensive study of women’s everyday lives as gleaned from their wills. Focusing on five settlements—Saltillo, San Esteban de Nueva Tlaxcala, San Fernando de Bexar, Santa Fe, and El Paso del Norte—Amy M. Porter argues that, despite rigid gender expectations, women on the frontier had the opportunity to act outside of that patriarchal structure, exerting their own power and influence in areas such as spirituality and economics. Wills provide a rich documentary source to understand women who often left no other documents. Wills tell us about “religion, family, economics, and material … yleyva{at}utep.edu