Document 4.3 Will of Edmund Titus, Oyster Bay, New York, 1754

Will of Edmund Titus, Oyster Bay, New York, 1754

The treatment of widows indicates the limited rights that colonial women held by the mid-eighteenth century. Wills provide detailed examples of wives’ lack of control over property, even after the death of their husbands. Instead of directly inheriting land, houses, and goods, widows were often placed under the legal protection (and control) of male relatives, whose decisions would regulate their finances and daily lives. The will of New York farmer Edmund Titus shows the customary arrangements of the era.

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Source: “Abstracts of Wills on File in the Surrogate’s Office, City of New York. Vol. V 1754–1760,” in Collections of the New-York Historical Society for the Year 1896 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1897), 30–31.

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