When I first discovered that the Kasper (Casper) land north of the Tippecanoe River was owned by Elizabeth Kasper and not by her husband, Karl Jacob Kasper, I was intrigued…and puzzled. I assumed that since women didn’t gain the right to vote in the US until 1920, men would own land and property in most families across the US.

I had the documentation that Elizabeth Kasper owned the land and her Last Will and Testament showed her granting her land to her husband. As I researched more broadly, I found that such arrangements weren’t nearly as rare as I’d thought.

Several states, including Mississippi, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Kentucky relaxed property ownership laws to include women between 1839 to 1844. Indiana made changes to property ownership laws around 1846 that would have allowed Elizabeth Kasper to wholly own the property purchased for her by her father.

My research on the Kasper (Casper) properties revealed that John Casper’s sister Emma also owned her land outright by 1890. This means she would have owned it even after she married Joseph Sellers.

The fact that women began to own land and property by the mid-19th century but could not vote until the 20th century suggests that progressive reforms for American women came in unpredictable stages. One of the best resources I can recommend to learn more is listed in the “For Further Reading” section below.

For further reading:

Speth, L. E. (2011), The married women’s property acts, 1839-1865: Reform, reaction or Revolution? In J. R. Lindgren et al., The Law of Sex Discrimination (4th Ed), Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, pp. 12(3-5).

Miss Grisnold Two Women, taken by C. M. Bell, 1891, Library of Congress