Good question, Carol, and it posed many a problem to the early courts and women because men so very often went west and disappeared. >....Concerning husbands who went west and never >returned.Is the wife ever > considered divorced after a certain period of time even >though no formal > divorce proceedings took place?? The answer is no; there was no set length of absence, and a husband gone and not making contact for long periods simply was not enough. The law for centuries had been that "abandonment" was a "voluntary" separation with an "intention" to remain apart from then on. That "intention" was very difficult to prove, since no one really knew if the husband was dead, sick and disabled, captured by the Indians, or even whether or not his letters had been lost in the incredibly poor mail service of those days. Indeed, the problem was peculiarly unique here because of our vast, harsh and distant frontiers. The courts solved it by holding that absence of a husband without explanation or contact for a long period, which absence left the family destitute and without food or shelter, was legal abandonment, without regard to what that husband appeared to have "intended." Still, it was very difficult, and many women, as did their men, simply moved, said they were widows, and took up with or married another man. > > Carol in Va > > > ==== VA-SOUTHSIDE Mailing List ==== > USGenWeb Archives Digital Maps Project > http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/maps/ > > > ============================== > Search over 1 Billion names at Ancestry.com! > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/rwlist1.asp >