This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/3AC.2ACE/1522.1 Message Board Post: Virginia's, and the other southern Colonies/States, used English Common Law. According to Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769) Sir William Blackstone it was the age of 21 when children came of age. "The legal power of a father (for a mother, as such, is entitled to no power, but only to reverence and respect) the power of a father, I say, over the persons of his children ceases at the age of twenty one: for they are then enfranchised by arriving at years of diferetion, or that point which the law has established (as some must necessarily be established) when the empire of the father, or other guardian, gives place to the empire of reason."