Melinda George married Jonathan Wilkinson on New Year’s Day
1828 in Gilford, New Hampshire. Jonathan
was the son of Benning Wilkinson, a founder of the Center Harbor, New Hampshire
and a Revolutionary War veteran.
I haven’t found any children for this marriage, nor death
records for either Melinda or Jonathan.
They seemed to have disappeared from the records. And so I began to search deeds, probate, military and newspaper records. When I turned to
searching newspapers, I found this very interesting 1832 notice with GenealogyBank.com:
 |
| from GenealogyBank, Nw Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette (Concord, New Hampshire), Monday, 6 February 1832, Volume 2, Issue 136, page 4 |
Apparently, these notices are not unusual in old
newspapers. Along with lost horses, runaway
seamen, runaway apprentices and disinherited sons, you can easily find notices
of runaway wives.
Legally, a wife was the property of her husband, and she
owned nothing. Most wives left without
taking anything, not even their children.
There must have been something very wrong with the situation for a woman
to leave her children behind. If she
took them, they legally belonged to the husband. Because of these laws, some widows refused to
remarry. However, a widow with young
children would probably remarry quickly for the protections and financial
stability of a husband.
Marriage was a contract.
If a woman bought or sold anything, it belonged to her husband. These
notices usually contained language, like this one, stating that the husband
would no longer honor any of her debts or contracts. This was a clause that prevented the runaway
from obtaining employment or purchases, in an attempt to have her return home. Anyone who assisted the fugitive wife risked a
lawsuit for damages.
Marcia Schmidt Blaine of Plymouth State University has been
touring New Hampshire lecturing on these newspaper notices with her lecture “Runaway
Wives: When Colonial Marriages Failed”.
She is sponsored by the New Hampshire Humanities Council. You can find one of her lectures on their
website calendar at www.nhhc.org/calendar.php
I have no further information on Jonathan and Melinda Wilkinson. But I do know that their story, whatever it
is, must be very interesting!
An interesting list of “Runaway Wife” notices from New York
1754 – 1774
A blog post dating from 2013 about runaway wife notices from
the “Housesandbooks” blog
A book by Maureen Taylor, Runaways, Deserters and Notorious
Villains from Rhode Island Newspapers, Camden, Maine: Picton Press,
1994.
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Copyright © 2014, Heather Wilkinson Rojo
Wow, what a fascinating post. And sobering too. Who knows what went on between husband and wife?! Thanks for sharing.
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