Hers, His, and Theirs: Community Property Law in Spain and Early Texas

In the mid-1700s, in the tiny villa of San Fernando de Béxar, on the northern fringes of the Spanish Empire in North America, Hispanic women had legal rights that would have astonished their British counterparts half a continent to the east. Under Spanish law, even in the sparsely settled land that would one day become Texas, married women could own property in their own names. They could control and manage not only their own property but even that of their husbands. And if their property r...