Betsy Love – The First Married American Woman to Gain Rights to Property

Mississippi Public Law 1838

Courtesy https://library.courts.ms.gov

A story of American Indians, African Americans, White Settlers and the Power of Matrilineal Culture

Betsy (AKA Betty) Love Allen’s story is joyfully significant but also painfully disconcerting. The ruling of a Mississippi State Supreme Court case in 1837, in favor of a Chickasaw woman Betsy Love, sounds like it should be a cause for celebration, and it is, partly. After all, the subsequent passing of the Mississippi Married Women’s Property Act of 1839, set the standard for American women being able to control their own property. Mississippi was the first state to make such a ruling.

Prior to the 1839 property act, women in the US did not have rights to property if their husbands were alive, a thought that tickles the imagination when it comes to what to do with a dead-beat husband.

Fortunately, Betsy and her husband were in agreement.

The saddest part of this story is that the property Betsy gained control of was a human being. Toney was enslaved by Betsy’s father, Thomas Love. After Love died, Betsy inherited his property and on November 14, 1829, she gift-deeded Toney to her daughter, Susan.

When Betsy’s husband, James/John Allen became indebted to Mr. John Fisher. Fisher wanted debt repayment and he insisted that Toney be sold at auction, with the proceeds going to Fisher for payment of the debt.

According to all the laws in the United States, Mr. Allen was the sole proprietor of all the possession of his and Betsy’s. Here is where the power of matrilineal culture takes over.

The outcome of the story is based on three facts.

1. The Chickasaw people have a matrilineal culture, and Betsy’s mother Sally Colbert was Chickasaw, thus making Betsy also Chickasaw.

2. Betsy and her husband were married under Chickasaw law. In 1830, the state of Mississippi deemed that contracts entered into under Chickasaw law would be upheld by the state.

3. Property in the Chickasaw Nation was owned by the women of the tribe.

The courts became involved when the Allen’s pointed out that they were legally married according to Chickasaw law, so the Chickasaw laws governed their property. Meaning Betsy owned all their property. It was Mr. Allen that was in debt to Mr. Fisher, so the court maintained that if Fisher extracted payment from Betsy Allen, it would violate her constitutional rights.

The courts ruled the Betsy was the legal property owner, and her husband did not have rights to her personal property.

This was the first case ruled providing women control of their own property. The travesty that the property in question was a person was to be resolved at a later time.
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Chickasaws, Tribal Laws, and the Mississippi Married Women’s Property Act of 1839 By: Robert Gilmer History 452 Dr. Tracy Rizzo 11/21/03

Laws of Mississippi, 1839, Chapter 46, section 4, 73. Jackson, MS. Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Roll #2502

http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/articles/6/betsy-love-and-the-mississippi-married-womens-property-act-of-1839