Women, Real Estate, and Wealth in a Southern US County, 1780–1860
通过分析弗吉尼亚州亨里科县的房地产契约和遗嘱认证记录，研究了1780–1860年间美国南部自由女性（尤其是精英阶层）的资产积累，发现其个人和房地产持有量显著增长，支持了女性经济地位渐进式提升的观点。
Abstract In her 1986 book Women and the Law of Property in Early America, Marylynn Salmon concludes that the legal and economic changes experienced by early national and antebellum (pre–Civil War) United States women – which culminated in the passage of married women's property acts – were evolutionary rather than revolutionary. This paper examines changes in the economic status of women preceding the enactment of these statutes by analyzing new and valuable information: real-estate deeds and probate records in Henrico County, Virginia. Supplementing the diverse, yet limited, international and historical evidence on women's wealth holdings, this exploration of the asset accumulation of elite, free women in the southern US reveals that women's property holdings, personal and real, rose substantially over the 1780–1860 period. Thus, these results are consistent with those of other scholars, such as Marylynn Salmon, who document an increase in early national and antebellum women's economic status.