Family, Law, and Inheritance in America

Yvonne Pitts is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Purdue University. She received a Filson Fellowship at the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky, and has been a fellow at J. Willard Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Dr Pitts has been published in The Journal of Women's History.

• Introduction; 1. 'Parental justice': inheritance and obligation in families; 2. 'My black family': manumissions and freedom in inheritance disputes; 3. The arbiters of sanity: medical experts and jurists; 4. Physical impairments and degenerate minds: the body as evidence; 5. A special power: women's testamentary capacity; Epilogue.

'In the skilful hands of Yvonne Pitts, the law of inheritance becomes a lens through which to consider broader discussions over the fraught relationships among individuals, their families, their communities, and the shape of American society more generally in the nineteenth century. Highly readable and deeply researched, the book highlights the contingencies of social change in this period as people grappled with the implications of emancipation, economic change, and the changing role of women. It also recasts our understanding of people's relationship to the law, showing how the emotions that drove family conflicts had as much to do in defining the law as the law did in resolving their all-too-human disputes.' Laura F. Edwards, Duke University