In a message dated 6/2/2003 6:49:39 PM Mountain Daylight Time, churchil@koyote.com writes: > You are precisely correct as to the reasoning for banning the marriage > to a spouse's siblings. However, it is not correct that the marriage of > a widow to her husband's brother was legal. Both cases were incestuous. > > This situation did not change in England and her Colonies until the > "Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act of 1907" was enacted. But, that > act only legalized the husband marrying a deceased wife's sister. It > remained illegal for a widow to marry her deceased husband's brother > until 1921 when the "Deceased Brother’s Widow’s Marriage Act of 1921" > was enacted. > > Such a marriage was quite risky. It may not have made too much > difference to shop holders, people of the trades and laborers since many > of these classes held property through Copyhold but it could make a big > difference to any Freeholder (husbandmen, yeoman and up). Such a > marriage was non existent. The children were bastardized and, thus, > made ineligible to inherit tenure. This means that a father's holdings > in land could not be passed to his children. Likewise, his widow (since > he legally had no widow) could not, after his death, receive and hold > his land under her widow's dowry right. The children's and the wife's > rights to hold would have terminated upon his death regardless of his > will. The husband and father's tenure would either cease or the land > would pass to eligible allied relatives. While this doesn't include the 17th Century topic (very few of my 17th Century ancestors had second marriages), I have dozens of lines and collateral lines in the mid-late 1700s, and 1800s all along the eastern and mid-Atlantic states where the widow or widower marries a sibling of the deceased. (It averages that a widower would marry a younger sister while the widow would marry an older brother.) One man married three sisters. (The first two died in childbirth with their second or third child.) Not only did they marry into the same family again, the fathers left wills giving land and personal property items to all the children. There wasn't anything in the court houses saying a second marriage was illegal (matter of fact, they were performed by the resident reverend or J.P.) or the children of the second marriage could not inherit. Researching: Appley, Asbury, Ayers, Barnum, Bauder/Bader, Bowling, Briggs, Burton, Carr, Clark, Dyer, Ecker, Finch, Flannery, Fox, Grim, Goodale, Hall, Hardendorf, Harman, Harper, Hawk, Hayes, Henkle/Hinkle, Keith, Marcy, Miller, Pier, Sawyer, Summerfield, Schenk, Shepard, Slocum, Strong, Teter, Tinkham, Thompson/Thomson, Tripp, Vansant, Walker, Whitlam, Wilks/Wilkes, Wolford, Wood, Woolever. http://www.treelines.com http://www.lineage.net Regards, Diane Wolford ====Useful sites==== http://rwguide.rootsweb.com/ (Hints for starting) http://communities.msn.com/AGenealogyExperience (A Genealogy Experience)