A genealogical research guide to Maine historical statutes from 1620 to 1950.
Historical Law Guides > Maine
|
Legal Ages at a Glance General Principles Legal Age of Adulthood Marriage Property Ownership |
Inheritance Taxation Courts Sources & Where to Verify |
| Legal milestone | Age | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Full majority | 21 | Both sexes, whole period |
| Marry (common law) | 14 male / 12 female | These ages held throughout; the statutes fixed consent ages rather than a minimum age |
| Marry without parental consent | 21 male / 18 female | The same figures from the Massachusetts act of 1786 through 1950 |
| Marry under 16 | 16 | From 1929 the clerk notified the judge of probate, who could stop the marriage |
| Choose own guardian | 14 | Both sexes, from 1783; a father's testamentary guardian also ran only to 14 |
| Guardianship ends | 21 | A female ward's guardianship ended earlier if she married |
| Make a will | 21 | Land and goods alike, from 1783; 3 disinterested witnesses |
| Serve as executor or executrix | 21 | An under-21 executor waited; the court appointed in the meantime |
| Witness a will | Any age if competent | Must be credible and disinterested |
| Witness a deed | Any age if competent | Competency, not age, was the test |
| Testify as a witness | Any age if competent | The judge tested understanding of the oath |
| Ratify a contract made while a minor | 21 | The ratification had to be in writing |
| Apprenticeship ends | 21 male / 18 female | From the Massachusetts act of 1794; a girl's indenture also ended if she married before 18 |
| Bound out with own consent | 14 | Under 14 a child was bound by a parent or guardian alone |
| Taxable as a poll | 16 to 1820; 21 from 1821 | Males only; liability then ran for life, relieved only by the assessors’ exemption |
| Jury service | 21 to 70 | Property-owning voters to 1820; voters of good moral character after; women from 1921 |
| Criminal responsibility | 14 at common law | Under 7 none; 7–14 presumed none; juvenile handling from 1919 |
Maine's law is English common law — law made by judges, handed down through court decisions rather than written by a legislature — and it reached Maine through Massachusetts. English settlement began on the Maine coast in the 1620s. The country beyond the Piscataqua was erected by the Massachusetts General Court into a county called Yorkshire in the early 1650s, its inhabitants to have the same protection and justice as those south of the river; under the province charter of 1691 it was part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay; and from the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 until 15 March 1820 it was the District of Maine, governed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts1.
For any question before 1820, then, the law that governed in Maine was Massachusetts law, and this guide gives the Massachusetts rule as the Maine rule for those years. Three bodies of law follow one another: the colony laws to 1692, the province acts from 1692 to 1780, and the acts of the Commonwealth from 1780 to 1820.
The Constitution of 1820 carried the whole existing body of law forward: all laws then in force in the State, and not repugnant to the constitution, remained in force until the Legislature altered or repealed them or they expired by their own limitation2. A Maine rule of the 1820s is therefore usually a Massachusetts rule, and the first Maine statute on a subject often restates what was already being done. Where the new State did change a Massachusetts rule — the age at which a man became taxable, the property test for jurors — this guide says so at that point.
Four features run through almost everything.
Full legal age was 21, for women and men alike, for the whole period. It is a common-law rule rather than a statutory one, and the statutes assume it on both sides of 1820: the Massachusetts wills act of 1783 gave the power to devise land to a person "of the age of twenty-one years, and upwards"4, and Maine's own statutes speak of a person "under twenty-one years of age" and of arriving at "full age."
A minor could own property. What the law restrained was the minor's power to bind himself. A contract made by a minor was enforceable against him only if he ratified it in writing after turning 21, with two exceptions — necessaries, and real estate to which he had received the title and kept the benefit5. A deed given by a minor was voidable on the same principle: it stood until the minor chose to undo it. So a minor's land was ordinarily sold for him by a guardian under a license from the probate court rather than by his own deed.
Binding a child out as an apprentice or servant ran to 21 for a boy and 18 for a girl, and this is the age most easily confused with majority. The Massachusetts act of 1794 set the pattern: a child under 14 could be bound by deed until that age by his father, or on the father's death by his mother or legal guardian, and a child with no parent or guardian could bind himself with the approval of the town's selectmen; a minor of 14 and upwards was bound only with his own consent expressed in the deed, females to 18 or to marriage within that age, males to 216. Maine re-enacted the same rule, word for word in substance, in its own revisions78.
The indenture was made in two parts, one kept by the master and one by the parent or guardian for the minor's use; where the town's officers consented, a part was deposited with the town clerk9. That deposited part is the copy a researcher is likely to find, and it gives the child's age or term.
The common law fixed capacity to marry at 14 for a boy and 12 for a girl, and neither Massachusetts nor Maine changed it. What the statutes regulated was consent.
Under the province act of 1692–93 a justice of the peace or settled minister could marry only persons "having the consent of those whose immediate care and government they are under"10. No ages were named, so the requirement reached any party still under a parent's or master's government.
The Massachusetts act of 1786 put figures on it, and they are unusual enough to be worth memorizing: where a male under 21 or a female under 18 was to be married, the consent of the parent, guardian, or other person whose immediate care and government that party was under had first to be obtained11. Maine's first marriage act, in 1821, carried the same two ages forward12, and they were still being printed in the same words more than a century later13.
Two consequences follow, and they hold from 1786 to 1950. A bride of 19 needed nobody's permission; a groom of 19 did. And a consent filed with the intentions brackets an age — it tells you the man was under 21, or the woman under 18.
From 1929 a marriage under 16 took an extra step. The clerk could issue the certificate only with the parents' or guardian's written consent and after notifying the judge of probate for the county in writing, who could order that no certificate issue14.
The machinery changed remarkably little in two centuries. Under the province act, the banns — the public announcement of an intended marriage — were asked at three public meetings in both the towns where the parties lived, or their names and intention were posted for fourteen days at a public place in each town, and the couple produced the town clerk's or constable's certificate of publishment to the officiant10. The Massachusetts act of 1786 kept both routes, added that the intention be entered with the clerk fourteen days beforehand, and allowed a plantation couple in Cumberland or Lincoln county who lived twenty miles from the next town to marry without a certificate if they had lived there twelve months and were over the consent ages11. Maine's 1821 act reproduced the publishment scheme15.
The return is the record that matters. The province act made every justice and minister keep a register and return it quarterly to the clerk of the sessions of the peace for the county16; the 1786 act moved the return to the town clerk, once a year in April, certifying the christian names and surnames of everyone married in the year17; and Maine kept the annual town return15. So a marriage before 1786 is looked for in county sessions records and one after it in the town book.
Two later dates carry weight. Statewide registration began on 1 January 1892 under an act of 1891 that made the secretary of the state board of health the registrar of vital statistics and required printed blanks with set headings, so Maine marriage records after 1891 are markedly fuller18. And by the 1930s the ceremony had to be performed before at least two witnesses besides the officiant19, which puts two more names on a late return. A couple who married out of state and came home to live filed a certificate of the marriage with the town clerk within seven days of their return20, so an out-of-state marriage can still sit in a Maine town book.
Who could officiate widened slowly: justices of the peace and settled ministers under the province act, every justice within his county and every settled and ordained minister in his town under the act of 178621, and by Maine's mid-century law persons licensed to preach by an association of ministers, a religious seminary, or an ecclesiastical body as well22. Marriages among the Quakers or Friends, in the form used in their own meetings, were valid throughout and stood outside all of this; the keeper of the meeting's records returned a yearly list of them, to the clerk of the sessions under the 1786 act23 and to the town clerk under Maine's24.
Marriage within the prohibited degrees of kindred — the list of relatives too close to marry — was incestuous and void, and Maine's 1821 act set out the full list for each sex25. A marriage contracted while either party had a husband or wife still living and undivorced was void26. A person who was insane or an idiot could not contract marriage27, and from 1917 the same rule reached the "feeble minded"28.
Anyone who thought a marriage was about to be unlawfully contracted could stop it. Under the 1786 act, reasons filed in writing with the town clerk held up the certificate, and the objector had seven days to get the decision of two justices of the peace on whether the reasons were good29; Maine kept the same procedure30. Maine residents who went to another state to marry in order to evade these rules, and then came back to live, found the marriage void here31.
A valid marriage required a ceremony before an authorized officiant, from the province period onward. A couple who simply lived together remained single in the eyes of the law, and their children were born out of wedlock and inherited on that footing (see Inheritance)32.
A defectively celebrated marriage was still a marriage. A marriage solemnized before a known inhabitant professing to be a justice of the peace or an ordained or licensed minister stood despite any want of authority in that person, or any omission or informality in entering the intention, if it was otherwise lawful and either party believed in good faith that they were lawfully married33. The penalties fell on the officiant and the clerk, so an irregular Maine marriage is a real marriage and its children are legitimate.
The bar is a Massachusetts rule that Maine inherited, and it is older than the State by more than a century. The province act of 1705–6 forbade any of the Queen's English or Scottish subjects, or of any other Christian nation in the province, to contract matrimony with a negro or mulatto, and forbade anyone authorized to solemnize marriages to join such a couple, on a penalty of fifty pounds. The same act provided that no master should unreasonably deny marriage to his negro with one of the same nation34. The Commonwealth re-enacted the prohibition in 1786, with the same penalty, and declared all such marriages absolutely null and void35. Maine's first marriage act, in 1821, re-enacted it again36, and it was carried into every revision for sixty years more37.
Because the marriage was void rather than merely voidable, the children of such a couple were illegitimate and could not inherit from their father. That is what the Supreme Judicial Court held in 1852, in an estate dispute over a man who had died without a will after fifty-nine years of marriage: the marriage was treated as never having existed, and the children took nothing through him. The same case decided who counted as white by a fractional test, holding that a woman with one-sixteenth Indian ancestry was a white woman and her husband, a mulatto, was not a white man38. Racial descriptions in Maine records of this period are legal conclusions drawn that way, not self-descriptions.
Where an interracial couple's estate was settled before 1883, expect the property to have passed to collateral kin, and expect the children to appear in the record as heirs of their mother alone (see Inheritance). Because the ban named "Indian," it reached marriages between white people and Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Micmac people for the whole of that time.
It ended on 12 March 1883, when the Legislature struck the words out of the statute and left the section reading only that no insane person or idiot was capable of contracting marriage39.
A man could own land at any age, taking it by descent, gift, devise, or purchase. The age that mattered was 21, when he could deal in it himself: a person owning real estate and having a right of entry could convey it by a deed acknowledged and recorded40. Marriage changed nothing about a man's own land — he bought, sold, and devised it in his own name, and his signature alone carried the deed, subject to his wife's dower (below).
A foreign-born man held land on the same terms as anyone else. An alien could take, hold, convey, and devise real estate or any interest in it, and conveyances already made by or to an alien were confirmed41. A Maine deed to an unnaturalized immigrant is good, and no naturalization record stands behind it.
Free people of color held, conveyed, inherited, and devised land on the same terms as anyone else, and appear in the land and probate records accordingly. Maine entered the Union in 1820 as a free state, and its constitution made every male citizen of the United States aged 21 and upwards an elector without reference to race42. The marriage rule described above is the one race-based restriction this guide found in the chapters it surveyed.
Through the Massachusetts period and the first quarter-century of statehood, a married woman lived under coverture — the common-law rule that merged a wife's legal identity into her husband's. A single woman or widow (a feme sole, "woman alone") could buy, own, sell, sue, and be sued freely. A married woman (a feme covert, "covered woman") held her land subject to her husband's management, and he took its rents and profits.
Maine dismantled coverture in six statutes over thirteen years, and each one changes what to expect in the records:
| Year | What the act provided |
|---|---|
| 1844 | A married woman may become seized of property in her own name by bequest, devise, gift, purchase, or distribution, provided it did not come from her husband after coverture; and property she owns on marrying continues to her as her separate property, exempt from her husband's debts and contracts43 |
| 1848 | She may sue and defend in her own name as if unmarried, and execute the bonds and contracts the suit requires44 |
| 1852 | She may lease, sell, convey, and dispose of her property and execute all papers necessary, in her own name as if unmarried45 |
| 1855 | She may convey her real or personal estate by her separate deed, in her own name, as if unmarried46 |
| 1856 | Land that came to her from her husband — conveyed by him directly or indirectly, paid for by him, or given or devised to her by his relatives — may be conveyed only if her husband joins in the deed47 |
| 1857 | She may demand and receive the wages of her own labor performed other than for her own family, hold them against her husband and anyone else, and sue for them in her own name48 |
The date to remember is 22 March 1844: a woman marrying after it kept her property, and a husband marrying after it acquired no right to any property of his wife49. Rights a husband had acquired by an earlier marriage were untouched, so for couples married before 1844 the old law kept running.
By 1857 the position was summed up in one sentence worth reading twice: a married woman, of any age, could own real and personal estate in her own right and manage, sell, convey, and devise it by will as if single and without her husband's joinder or assent — except for the land that had come from him50. A married woman under 21 could convey, so never assume a signing wife had reached majority.
Where a husband abandoned his wife without sufficient provision, or was confined in the state prison under sentence, the court could authorize her to contract in her own name for the duration51. That order is a court record, filed with the county, and it tells you a marriage had collapsed.
This is the single most useful dating tool in Maine land research, and the driver is dower.
Dower is a widow's life interest in her husband's land: the use of one-third of it for the rest of her life, with ownership passing to the heirs. It attached to every parcel the husband held at any time during the marriage, so a buyer needed the wife to give up her claim. The Massachusetts act of 1783 stated the widow's right as her "just third part" of all lands of which she was dowable, gave the heir one month after demand to set it out, and let her sue by writ of dower if he did not; three disinterested freeholders of the county, under oath, laid it off, and where the land could not be divided she took a third of the rents and profits instead52. Maine carried that common-law dower forward without change53.
A wife gave up dower by joining in her husband's deed, or in a later one54. Her signature and the ordinary acknowledgment before an official were all that was needed. Where the husband was under guardianship she could release by her own sole deed54.
The husband's counterpart right was curtesy — a widower's life interest in his late wife's land. Where the land came to her before 22 March 1844, was under improvement, and a child was born alive of her body who could inherit it, he held it for his life as tenant by the curtesy. Where a wife died without a will leaving a solvent estate, he had the use for life of one-third of her real estate if she left children, and one-half if she left none55.
| Period | What the survivor took in land the other had held during the marriage | Signature needed on the other's deed? |
|---|---|---|
| To 1895 | Dower or curtesy — a life estate in one-third53 | Yes |
| From 1 May 1895 (couples married on or after that date) | A share in fee: one-third with issue, one-half with no issue, the whole with no kindred — reaching land held during the marriage and not barred or released56 | Yes |
| From 1 January 1897 (couples already married on 1 May 1895) | The same share in fee57 | Yes |
The 1895 act, approved 26 March 1895, put that descendible share in the place of dower and curtesy58. The share still reached land the deceased was seized of during the marriage unless it had been barred or released, so the spouse's joinder in a deed remained necessary; what the survivor ended up holding was now ownership rather than a life interest. The couple's marriage date decides which rules apply: a widow whose husband died in 1896 took dower if they had married in 1880, and the new share if they had married in 1896. Either way, a husband or wife of any age could bar the interest by joining in the other's deed59.
Dower reached a wood lot or other land used with the farm or dwelling house though never cleared, and stopped short of wild lands60. It was set out by three discreet and disinterested persons on the judge of probate's warrant, by metes and bounds61 — a return filed in the probate court that often describes the homestead field by field and names the heirs it is carved out of.
A child could own land at any age. Conveying it went through the probate court: a minor's real estate was sold under a license of court, on petition, with a bond, and the deed was executed by the guardian62. A Maine deed conveying a child's land has a probate file standing behind it, and that file names the family.
A Maine deed was signed by the grantor — the person making the deed — acknowledged before an official, and recorded in the registry of deeds for the district where the land lay; a certificate of acknowledgment, or of proof of execution, had to be endorsed on or annexed to the deed before it could be recorded63.
A witness to a deed could be of any age, provided he understood an oath and could relate what he had seen; competency, not age, was the test. The statute fixed no number and no age. What it did do was make a subscribing witness — one who signs the deed — useful: where a grantor died or left the state without acknowledging his deed, its execution could be proved by such a witness before a court of record64. In practice witnesses were adults and often neighbors or kin, which makes the names at the foot of a Maine deed worth collecting.
Land on the tribal reservations was held under a certificate rather than a deed. The State's agent for each tribe gave each Indian a certificate of the lot laid out to him for cultivation, and the lot could not be sold or leased, nor its growth carried off faster than clearing required, without the agent's permission65. Contracts made with a member of either tribe for trees, timber, or grass on the tribal lands were void unless examined and allowed by the agent, and the agents' own leases and timber sales were capped by statute66. Where a transaction in tribal land or timber turns up, the operative document is the agent's allowance, and it is filed with the agent's accounts rather than in the registry of deeds.
A person who died without a will died intestate. For the first century of Maine's recorded settlement the estate was not divided equally, and this is the single most important thing to know about an early Maine estate.
Under the province act of 1692–93 the judge of probate distributed what remained after debts and funeral charges as follows: one-third part of the personal estate to the wife forever, besides her dower in the houses and lands for life; and all the residue of the real and personal estate in equal portions among the children and those who represented a dead child — except the eldest son then surviving, who took two shares, a double portion of the whole. Where there were no sons the daughters inherited together in equal shares. A child already provided for during the parent's life had that provision counted against his share. The houses and lands were divided by five sufficient freeholders on oath, or any three of them, appointed and sworn by the judge67.
The Commonwealth restated the same scheme in 1783: equal shares among the children and their representatives, except the eldest son then surviving, who had two shares; personal estate distributed the same way, after the widow's one-third of it forever — one-half where there were no children — and her apparel and such other goods as the judge thought necessary to her degree; and her dower in the land in every case68.
The double share ended on 1 January 1790. The act of 1789 provided that from that day real and personal estate should descend and be distributed in equal shares among the children and their representatives69. An estate division in Maine before that date should give the eldest son twice what each of his brothers and sisters received; one after it should give them all the same. A division that does not fit the year is a signal to check the dates again.
The ladder Maine used for the rest of the period was settled by the Massachusetts act of 1805: land descends to the children and the issue of a deceased child, and failing them to the father, then the mother with the brothers and sisters, then the mother alone, then the next of kin, and for want of kindred it escheats — falls to the State — with curtesy and dower saved out of it. Personal estate went to the same people in the same proportions, except that a surviving husband took the whole residue and a widow took one-third with children and one-half with none70. Maine re-enacted both the ladder71 and the fractions72.
| If the intestate left | The real estate went to |
|---|---|
| Children | The children in equal shares, and the lawful issue of a deceased child by right of representation |
| No living child, but other descendants | All the lineal descendants — equally if all of the same degree, otherwise by right of representation |
| No issue | The father |
| No issue or father | The mother, brothers, and sisters in equal shares, a deceased brother's or sister's children taking by representation |
| No issue, father, brother, or sister | The mother alone |
| None of the above | The next of kin in equal degree, preferring those claiming through a nearer ancestor |
| No kindred at all | The State, by escheat |
The surviving spouse's share of the personal estate was a fixed fraction that held whatever the number of children — which is worth noting, because in many states it moved with the size of the family:
| Survivor | Situation | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Widow | Widow and issue | One-third |
| Widow | No issue | One-half |
| Widow | No kindred | The whole |
| Widower | The same shares in his wife's estate | One-third / one-half / the whole |
Anything left in an administrator's hands after debts and expenses, and not specifically bequeathed, was distributed by these same rules73. Before 1895 the widow's interest in the land itself was dower, a life estate in one-third; the 1895 act extended these same fractions to real estate, which is why one-third, one-half, and the whole reappear there.
Money received on a life insurance policy sat outside the estate: it did not go to pay debts where the intestate left a widow or issue, but descended one-third to the widow and the rest to the issue; with no issue the whole went to the widow, and with no widow the whole to the issue74.
On top of her share a widow received an allowance out of the personal estate — so much, besides her ornaments and wearing apparel, as the judge deemed necessary according to her husband's degree and estate and the state of the family under her care. The judge could also allow her any one pew in a meeting house of which the deceased died seized, and the allowance when recorded vested the title in her75. It was available in any intestate estate, and in a testate one that was insolvent or that made no provision for her. It is a separate probate record, and it usually names the family.
Where a will made a specific provision for the widow, she had six months after probate — the proving of the will in court — to elect whether to take it or claim her dower, and could not have both unless the will plainly so intended76. Her election, or her silence, is in the probate file and tells you which she chose.
A guardian was appointed chiefly because a minor owned property. A minor inherited immediately, and managing the inheritance is what the guardian was for, so where a child inherited nothing there was often no guardianship record at all. In Maine the appointment was made by the judge of probate for the county where the minor lived, or where the minor's estate lay if he lived out of state, and no executor or administrator of an estate could be guardian to a minor interested in it77.
At fourteen the child chose, and this rule is as old as the province. The Massachusetts act of 1783 empowered the judge of probate to allow guardians chosen by minors of fourteen years of age and to appoint them for children under that age, to take security from every guardian, and to have the guardian account when the minor reached twenty-one; a minor over fourteen living more than ten miles from the judge could have his choice certified by a justice of the peace, or by the town clerk where no justice lived in the town78. Maine carried the rule, the ten-mile proviso and all, into its own statutes79. A father could also appoint a guardian for his minor children by will, and that appointment likewise ran only to 1480.
The value of this to a researcher is high. A guardianship record in which the child does the choosing is evidence the child had reached 14, which brackets a birth year; a new guardian replacing an existing one at about the same time points the same way.
Guardians gave bond and settled their accounts with the judge of probate at least once in three years, and oftener if cited81. Guardianship ended at 21, with one exception worth knowing: on the marriage of a female ward under 21, her guardian's authority ceased82. Where a girl's guardianship stops short of her majority, look for a marriage.
Maine settled this by statute, and the rule as it stood by the twentieth century ran in three parts83:
In each case the child and its issue inherited from the parents and from their lineal and collateral kindred, and those kindred from the child, exactly as if the child were legitimate. So a later marriage, or a single acknowledgment filed with a justice of the peace, can turn a child born years earlier into a full heir — and when an inheritance runs to such a child, that marriage or acknowledgment is the record to look for.
Paternity and support were fixed in a bastardy proceeding, and it generates an unusually informative file. The mother accused the man before a justice of the peace, who took her accusation and examination on oath, naming the accused and describing as exactly as possible the time and place the child was begotten; a warrant issued to the sheriff, and the man gave bond to appear. On a finding of guilt he was adjudged the father, charged with the child's maintenance with the mother's assistance as the court ordered, and gave two bonds — one to the mother and one to the town liable for the child's support, the latter deposited with the clerk of courts84. The mother of such a child could also bind him out during minority, a power that ceased if she afterwards married85.
The age to make a will was 21, for land and goods alike, and three witnesses were required — a Massachusetts rule of 1783 that Maine kept without alteration4. Maine's own section states it in one sentence: a person of sound mind and of the age of twenty-one years could dispose of real and personal estate by a will in writing, signed by him or by someone else at his request and in his presence, and subscribed in his presence by three disinterested and credible attesting witnesses86.
A witness to a will could be of any age. What the statute demanded was that the witness be credible and disinterested — having nothing to gain under the will — so a beneficiary among the three is a problem, and that is why Maine will-drafters used neighbors rather than legatees. Witnesses competent when they attested stayed good even if they later became incompetent87.
Some protections operated whatever the will said. A child born after the testator's death and not provided for took the share he would have taken had there been no will, and a child, or the issue of a deceased child, left out of the will took as an heir unless the omission was plainly intentional or that child had already had a due proportion during the testator's life88. Property a will did not dispose of was distributed as an intestate estate.
A spoken will was good in narrow circumstances. The three kinds of Maine will sit side by side like this:
| Kind of will | Who could make it, and when | Witnesses | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attested (the ordinary will) | Anyone of sound mind aged 21 | Three, disinterested and credible, subscribing in the testator's presence86 | Passes real and personal estate alike |
| Nuncupative (spoken) | Made during the testator's last sickness, at home or where he had lived the ten days before — unless taken sick away from home and dying before his return | Three, present at the making and asked by the testator to bear witness | Proof barred after six months unless the words were written down within six days; cannot pass more than $10089 |
| Soldier's or mariner's | A soldier in actual service or a mariner at sea | None required | Personal estate and wages only89 |
That last row is worth remembering in a state with Maine's maritime and military record.
The age to serve as executor or executrix was 21, and a woman named as executrix served on the same terms as a man. Where an executor named in a will was under 21 when the will was proved, administration with the will annexed was granted for the duration of his minority, unless another executor accepted; in that case the other administered the estate until the minor came of age, when he could be admitted as joint executor on giving bond90. A change of administrator about twenty-one years after a testator's death often has exactly this explanation, and it dates a birth.
Everything turns on the annual assessment. Each town's assessors took a list of the taxable polls — a poll being a person taxed by the head rather than on what he owned — and a valuation of the inhabitants' estates. The poll tax was assessed on each taxable person in the place where he was an inhabitant on the first day of May each year, and from 1853 on the first day of April91. The list names every taxable man in the town, every year, and is the closest thing Maine has to an annual census.
Beyond the poll tax, individuals met a property tax on real and personal estate92, a highway tax workable on the roads, and — in the twentieth century — an inheritance and succession tax that generated a return in the probate file, usually naming every beneficiary and their relationship to the deceased.
The taxable age changed at statehood, and this is the fact most likely to mislead someone reading an early list.
Under Massachusetts a male became a poll at 16, and he was one for the whole time Maine was governed from Boston. The first province tax act, of 1692–93, had the selectmen list every male person in the town from sixteen years old and upwards and taxed each one by the head, and the same age runs through the province tax acts of the following decade. It was still the rule in the District years: the valuation act of 1784 required the assessors of every town, district, and plantation to lodge a list of all male polls of sixteen years old and upwards, whether at home or abroad, marking those the law exempted, and the tax act of the same year assessed the male polls above sixteen at eleven shillings and eight pence each, a boy under a master or mistress being taxed to them as apprentices were93. A colonial or District of Maine list therefore counts boys from their sixteenth year, five years earlier than a Maine list of the same town would.
Maine set the age at 21. A poll tax was assessed on every male inhabitant above the age of twenty-one, citizen or alien, unless exempted94. That standing rule of 1845 fixed in one place an age the State had used from the beginning: the periodic valuations counted every male poll of twenty-one years of age and upwards liable to be taxed, and the assessment statutes prescribed the machinery and left the classes of ratable polls to the act that laid each tax95.
| Period | Taxation began at | Taxation ended at |
|---|---|---|
| 1692–1820 (Massachusetts) | 16, males, including negroes and mulattoes | Set by the assessors' power to exempt |
| 1821–1950 (Maine) | 21, males, citizen or alien | Set by the assessors' power to exempt |
Only men were polls in either period, and there the age rules stop: neither the Massachusetts acts nor the Maine chapters set an age at which a man ceased to be a poll. Liability began at 16, or at 21 after 1820, and ran for the rest of his life. The only relief at the far end was the assessors' exemption below, granted case by case and recorded in their list rather than fixed by statute.
A man could drop off the poll list while alive and still living in town. The exempt classes were:
When a man vanishes from a poll list but appears elsewhere in the record, an assessors' exemption is usually the explanation — and after 1865, so is military service. Because no birthday ended the tax, an old man dropping off a list marks the year the assessors judged him unable to pay, not an age set by law.
Under Massachusetts the town chose its own jurors, and a juror had to own property. Thirty days before the sitting of the Supreme Judicial Court the clerk sent his warrant to the constables, who assembled the freeholders and other inhabitants qualified by law to vote for representatives, and those voters elected by ballot so many good and lawful men of their town, of like qualification and of good moral character, as the warrant directed100. The qualification the voters and the jurors shared was the property test in the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780: a freehold within the town of the annual income of three pounds, or any estate of the value of sixty pounds101.
So a Maine man serving on a jury before 1820 held property, and his name on a jury list is evidence of it.
Maine dropped the property test and drew its jurors from its voters. Once every three years the town's municipal officers, treasurer, and clerk prepared a list of jurors and laid it before the town, which could strike names but not add any102. The list was to be made up of persons of good moral character, qualified as the constitution directs to vote for representatives, and under the age of seventy years103. The constitution made an elector of every male citizen of the United States aged 21 and upwards, resident three months, excepting paupers, persons under guardianship, and Indians not taxed42.
The working test was therefore an adult man aged 21 to 70 who was a qualified voter of good moral character. Because Maine's elector clause set no property qualification, a Maine juror after 1820 needed no land, on the regular panel or as a talesman — a bystander summoned on the spot to fill out a short jury. And because that clause drew no racial line, Black men in Maine were eligible for jury service from statehood; tribal members, exempt from taxation and so within the "Indians not taxed" exception, were outside the voter lists and therefore the jury lists.
Fourteen public offices and professions were exempt, and their names were kept off the lists altogether — among them the governor, councilors, judges and clerks of the common law courts, judges and registers of probate, registers of deeds, settled ministers of the gospel, officers of colleges, physicians and surgeons, sheriffs and their deputies, coroners, attorneys, county commissioners, constables, and constant ferrymen104. Approved names were written on tickets and kept in the jury box at the town clerk's office, and a man was liable to be drawn once in three years and no oftener105.
Women became eligible in 1921, when the Legislature inserted seven words into the jury statute — "but no person shall be disqualified by reason of sex"106. The same act raised the other qualifications, so from 1921 a Maine juror had to be of good moral character, approved integrity, sound judgment, and well informed. From 1935 the selection moved to county jury commissioners, who kept a list of persons "male and female" deposited with the clerk of courts and open to public inspection107.
The common law governed at the start, on both sides of 1820: a child under 7 could not commit a crime at all; between 7 and 14 the law presumed he could not, and the State had to overcome the presumption; from 14 he bore full responsibility.
Maine came late to a separate juvenile system, and it arrived in stages:
| Year | What the act did |
|---|---|
| 1919 | A boy between 8 and 16 convicted of an offense punishable in the state prison, the county jail, or the house of correction could be committed to the state school for boys or sentenced, and the record of conviction was to be that he was convicted of juvenile delinquency108 |
| 1921 | The ceiling rose from 16 to 17, so a boy under 17 was incapable of any crime but murder or treason109 |
| 1931 | Municipal court judges were given exclusive original jurisdiction over offenses by children under 15, with power to place a child with a probation officer or in a family home, or commit him to the state board of children's guardians or the state schools110 |
| 1933 | That exclusive jurisdiction rose to 17111 |
An adjudication of juvenile delinquency was not a conviction, and a delinquent child was not a criminal112. For research this means that from 1919 the record of a young offender says "juvenile delinquency" rather than naming the offense, and from 1931 it sits in a municipal court's juvenile papers, where access is restricted.
A witness of any age could testify, if he or she understood the obligation of an oath and could give a rational account of what happened. Maine fixed no minimum age; the judge decided competency witness by witness, and children did testify.
Two statutes reshaped who could take the stand, and both explain what a case file looks like:
Two limits sat alongside. In a civil case where the cause of action implied a crime on the defendant's part, the parties testified only if the defendant offered himself, in which case the plaintiff could testify too114. And a person convicted of an infamous crime and sentenced in Maine was an incompetent witness unless restored115.
These grounds — understanding of the oath, religious belief until it was made a question of credibility, interest until 1856, and conviction of an infamous crime — are the ones the statutes named, and they applied to everyone alike whatever their race or sex. Women were competent witnesses throughout the period, and so were Black and tribal witnesses.
(Guide compiled by Jeniann Nielsen with AI assistance from Claude Opus 4.8 and Gemini Pro 3.1. Check primary sources as needed.)
Every rule above is tagged with the law it rests on. The lists below show where to read those laws in full, so anything here can be checked against the original. Massachusetts law is included because it was the law in force in Maine before 1820.