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Homesteads Ungovernable: Families, Sex, Race, and the Law in Frontier Texas, 1823-1860
When he settled in Mexican Texas in 1832 and began courting Anna Raguet, Sam Houston had been separated from his Tennessee wife Eliza Allen for three years, while having already married and divorced his Cherokee wife Tiana and at least two other Indian "wives" during the interval. Houston's political enemies derided these marital irregularities, but in fact Houston's legal and extralegal marriages hardly set him apart from many other Texas men at a time when illicit and unstable unions were common in the yet-to-be-formed Lone Star State. In this book, Mark Carroll draws on legal and social history to trace the evolution of sexual, family, and racial-caste relations in the most turbulent polity on the southern frontier during the antebellum period (1823-1860). He finds that the marriages of settlers in Texas were typically born of economic necessity and that, with few white women available, Anglo men frequently partnered with Native American, Tejano, and black women. While identifying a multicultural array of gender roles that combined with law and frontier disorder to destabilize the marriages of homesteaders, he also reveals how harsh living conditions, land policies, and property rules prompted settling spouses to cooperate for survival and mutual economic gain. Of equal importance, he reveals how evolving Texas law reinforced the substantial autonomy of Anglo women and provided them material rewards, even as it ensured that cross-racial sexual relationships and their reproductive consequences comported with slavery and a regime that dispossessed and subordinated free blacks, Native Americans, and Tejanos.
252 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 30, 2018
Although it reads more like a dissertation, this is a very informative work about how the laws (and sometimes lack there of) in frontier Texas affected marriages and families of the homesteaders. The author looks at how changes in law from Mexican rule through the Texas Republic and into Texas state laws affected the settlers living there: Anglo, Tejano, Black (both bondsmen and freedmen), illegitimate children, and women. The author inserts real law cases, which livens things up quite a bit.
The most fascinating story I found. There was a divorce between an Anglo man and his Anglo wife. The divorce was awarded to the wife because the husband had left her and moved into the house of one of his slave women, Jane. Although male adultery alone was not enough of a cause for divorce in this place and time, the fact that he moved out of the house was considered "abandonment". Also, the laws at the time allowed a divorced wife half of the homestead, the idea was that homesteading was not easy work and those women deserved half, sometimes even if they were at fault for the divorce. So, she was awarded half of the communal property. She then sued because her husband had sent his slave girlfriend and their children to his sister. In her argument they were part of the communal property.
I think this example illustrates just how MESSED up it is owning human beings....like nothing else I've ever read. But it also illustrates just how convoluted law in a frontier state could become when pragmatism in the law was of paramount importance.
The most fascinating story I found. There was a divorce between an Anglo man and his Anglo wife. The divorce was awarded to the wife because the husband had left her and moved into the house of one of his slave women, Jane. Although male adultery alone was not enough of a cause for divorce in this place and time, the fact that he moved out of the house was considered "abandonment". Also, the laws at the time allowed a divorced wife half of the homestead, the idea was that homesteading was not easy work and those women deserved half, sometimes even if they were at fault for the divorce. So, she was awarded half of the communal property. She then sued because her husband had sent his slave girlfriend and their children to his sister. In her argument they were part of the communal property.
I think this example illustrates just how MESSED up it is owning human beings....like nothing else I've ever read. But it also illustrates just how convoluted law in a frontier state could become when pragmatism in the law was of paramount importance.
August 16, 2017
Carroll's work asks how frontier conditions, slavery, and the multi-layered history of law in Texas affected the lives of men and women and creation of a sexual and familial order in Texas between 1823 and 1860. He attempts to balance four broad groups, Native Americans, African Americans, Tejanos, and Anglo Americans and how law and customs interpreted and regulated sexual and familial relations between and within groups. Carroll's six chapters take the reader through the variety of possibilities of sexual relations and how the law attempted to strengthen a single order of them over time, although one that still allowed the greatest freedom to Anglo men (and to a degree Anglo women). Carroll's introduction puts his discussion into the broader literature of families, gender, and sexuality, particularly to argue that Texas fits neither of the primary models available, that of the republican companionate marriage and the Southern plantation patriarchy.
The best part of Carroll's arguments is his grounding of them in the demographic, ecological, and cultural realities of Texas. While scholars often include culture, the other two are commonly left out or only briefly referenced. The great imbalance of men and women, the inaccessibility of courts, churches, and ecclesiastical officials; the dangers, physically and from other people, of the "frontier"; and the strong devotion to "manly independence" all played significant roles in producing a society where informal coupling and uncoupling, and then the acceptance of legal divorce, was common. While not always clear how Carroll divided up his chapters, he takes the reader through the sexual and familial reality of each cultural group, how it affected men and women differently, and then how the Anglo cultural norms became law. In particular, Carroll emphasizes how property law, which favored married individuals for land grants and allowed women to hold property, strongly influenced the sexual reality of antebellum Texas.
Carroll's arguments are solid, but how he gets to them and whether he proves them are a different story. For a place and period so chaotic as Texas between 1820 and 1860, Carroll gives remarkably little clear explanation of Texas' history (Texas' shifts from Spanish colony to independent Mexico, then to independent nation, and finally US state) nor does he make it clear what period he is discussing when. With the book's chapters organized by theme, this is quite problematic and makes for numerous instances of what appear to be contradictory statements which only a very close reading revealing Carroll jumping (or conflating) political periods.
Carroll has a tendency to make very broad claims without including in the text the data to back him up. While he meticulously cites places to find the data, the reader is left with an incomplete picture. For example, he writes on page 38 that "Anglo men, however, seldom took advantage of these rules" to legitimate bastard children. He gives the necessary information of where to find the evidence for this, but he never includes in his text (or notes) how he knows this to be a fact. Until the last two chapters, Carroll relies heavily on secondary sources and printed primary sources. This is not necessarily an issue, but it does give the same impression as above that leaves the reader asking "where is the full data?". When he finally gets to a fuller use of primary sources, primarily court opinions and case files, in the last two chapters, his arguments stand on more solid ground. But, he runs into other issues by making claims too large for his evidence to support. For example, on page 138 he claims "Texas courts almost always awarded a divorcing woman her community share and all of her separate property", but this is based only on Supreme Court and appellate court rulings, which represent only a fraction of court cases (and often ones with particular problems).
Other times he makes speculative claims that are far beyond possibility to test. For example, in discussing sexual relations and marriages between Anglo men and Native American women, he claims that "Few Native American women would have resorted to an affiliation proceeding to establish the paternity of their illegitimate child even had the procedure been available". (32) While possibly true, due to the fact that lineage more often followed the mother than than the father in Native American societies, there is no way to test this statement and pure speculation like this hurts his credibility.
If one can navigate Carroll's organizational problems, Carroll's overall argument, that law, individuals, and the "frontier environment" made family law different in antebellum Texas compared to other places in the South and the urbanizing North; holds true. As does the consequences of these things, that the social order promoted and put into place by Anglos, while it did create equitable marital relations, it also created a racial hierarchy that put Anglo families at the top.
The best part of Carroll's arguments is his grounding of them in the demographic, ecological, and cultural realities of Texas. While scholars often include culture, the other two are commonly left out or only briefly referenced. The great imbalance of men and women, the inaccessibility of courts, churches, and ecclesiastical officials; the dangers, physically and from other people, of the "frontier"; and the strong devotion to "manly independence" all played significant roles in producing a society where informal coupling and uncoupling, and then the acceptance of legal divorce, was common. While not always clear how Carroll divided up his chapters, he takes the reader through the sexual and familial reality of each cultural group, how it affected men and women differently, and then how the Anglo cultural norms became law. In particular, Carroll emphasizes how property law, which favored married individuals for land grants and allowed women to hold property, strongly influenced the sexual reality of antebellum Texas.
Carroll's arguments are solid, but how he gets to them and whether he proves them are a different story. For a place and period so chaotic as Texas between 1820 and 1860, Carroll gives remarkably little clear explanation of Texas' history (Texas' shifts from Spanish colony to independent Mexico, then to independent nation, and finally US state) nor does he make it clear what period he is discussing when. With the book's chapters organized by theme, this is quite problematic and makes for numerous instances of what appear to be contradictory statements which only a very close reading revealing Carroll jumping (or conflating) political periods.
Carroll has a tendency to make very broad claims without including in the text the data to back him up. While he meticulously cites places to find the data, the reader is left with an incomplete picture. For example, he writes on page 38 that "Anglo men, however, seldom took advantage of these rules" to legitimate bastard children. He gives the necessary information of where to find the evidence for this, but he never includes in his text (or notes) how he knows this to be a fact. Until the last two chapters, Carroll relies heavily on secondary sources and printed primary sources. This is not necessarily an issue, but it does give the same impression as above that leaves the reader asking "where is the full data?". When he finally gets to a fuller use of primary sources, primarily court opinions and case files, in the last two chapters, his arguments stand on more solid ground. But, he runs into other issues by making claims too large for his evidence to support. For example, on page 138 he claims "Texas courts almost always awarded a divorcing woman her community share and all of her separate property", but this is based only on Supreme Court and appellate court rulings, which represent only a fraction of court cases (and often ones with particular problems).
Other times he makes speculative claims that are far beyond possibility to test. For example, in discussing sexual relations and marriages between Anglo men and Native American women, he claims that "Few Native American women would have resorted to an affiliation proceeding to establish the paternity of their illegitimate child even had the procedure been available". (32) While possibly true, due to the fact that lineage more often followed the mother than than the father in Native American societies, there is no way to test this statement and pure speculation like this hurts his credibility.
If one can navigate Carroll's organizational problems, Carroll's overall argument, that law, individuals, and the "frontier environment" made family law different in antebellum Texas compared to other places in the South and the urbanizing North; holds true. As does the consequences of these things, that the social order promoted and put into place by Anglos, while it did create equitable marital relations, it also created a racial hierarchy that put Anglo families at the top.
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