I thought I would share a piece of an article I found, considering a lot of us question wills and land that was left for the wife and family. Virginia women gained some control over their property during the antebellum period. Although age-old laws still prohibited married women from owning land and goods in their own right, equity law increasingly allowed women to create separate estates prior to marriage and to challenge restrictive provisions in their husbands' wills. For a variety of reasons, a higher proportion of women than ever before--both white and free black--owned property in the first half of the nineteenth century and controlled its destiny through purchase, sale, gift or bequest. June