Mississippi Historical Law Guide

Contents

Legal Ages at a Glance

General Principles

An English legal system

Mississippi's law came from England. When Congress organized the Mississippi Territory on 7 April 1798, it placed the new government under the framework of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. That ordinance promised the inhabitants judicial proceedings according to the course of the common law — judge-made law, handed down through court decisions rather than written by a legislature. The governor and the territorial judges adopted a body of borrowed law, and the General Assembly gathered it into a printed digest in 1807¹.

Each new constitution carried forward the laws already in force, and the courts applied English common law as the background rule wherever a Mississippi statute had not displaced it². For any year, then, the rule that governed was the statute where one had been passed, and the common law otherwise.

Each spouse owned property separately

Husband and wife each owned property separately, and what one spouse acquired belonged to that spouse. American Mississippi worked from the common-law scheme of two separate estates, and the codes then broadened it in the wife's favor across the nineteenth century³.

Land titles carried over from the colonial period by a separate route. The Natchez district had been Spanish, and briefly British, before 1798. Congress sent commissioners to hear claims under British and Spanish patents and orders of survey. A confirmed claim became the root of an American title, and the territorial revenue acts taxed those confirmed claims by name⁴. A Natchez-district family's earliest land record is therefore often a federal claim file rather than a county deed.

A common law rewritten by statute

The General Assembly replaced common-law rules with statutes over time. A handful of dates make useful anchors, and each one marks a change you will see in the records:

• 1807 — land and goods alike descended to all the children equally, and a child born before the parents' marriage was legitimated by that marriage and the father's recognition⁵.
• 1839 — a married woman was allowed to take property in her own name, and the enslaved people she owned stayed hers, beyond the reach of her husband's creditors⁶.
• 1865 — freed couples living together were declared married and their children legitimate⁷.
• 1880 — a widow's and a widower's life interests in each other's land gave way to a fixed share of the estate, the last legal disabilities of married women were removed, and no homestead could be sold without both spouses' signatures⁸.
• 1890 — the new Constitution imposed a poll tax and a reading test on electors, and jury service followed the vote⁹.

Legal Age of Adulthood

Majority at twenty-one

Full legal age in Mississippi was 21, for men and women alike, throughout the period¹⁰. Reaching 21 was the moment a person could make binding contracts, sue and be sued in their own name, manage and sell their own land, and be free of a guardian.

A minor's legal capacity

A minor could own property. What the law limited was the minor's power to deal with it. A person under 21 could not make a binding contract except for necessaries — food, clothing, shelter, and the like¹¹. A minor's deed stood until the minor rejected it on reaching 21.

One route out existed. A minor could petition the chancery court — the court of equity, which handled estates, guardianships, and land disputes — to have the disabilities of minority removed. A decree lifting them let the young person act as an adult for the purposes it named¹². The petition and decree sit with the chancery clerk, and they show the person was under 21 on the date of the decree.

Marriage did not end minority. A married 15-year-old was still a minor¹³.

Marriage

Who was old enough to marry

Two different ages governed, and telling them apart matters.

The first is the age at which a person could agree to marry at all. Mississippi kept the common-law ages throughout: a boy could marry at 14, a girl at 12. A marriage of parties who had reached those ages was good even though no one had consented on their behalf¹⁴.

The second is the age below which a parent's consent had to be shown before a license would issue: under 21 for a male and under 18 for a female. That line was already in place in 1807. The parent or guardian gave consent in person before the register of the orphans' court, or proved it by the oath of a credible witness¹⁵. It then ran unbroken through the marriage chapter of every later compilation — Hutchinson's code of 1848, the Revised Codes of 1857, 1871 and 1880, and the codes of 1892, 1906, 1917 and 1930¹⁶. It still stood in 1948, when the consent had to be sworn and had to state the ages of the couple¹⁷. A consent filed with a license application therefore names a parent and gives a child's age.

Marriage by agreement alone

A couple who agreed to be married and lived together as husband and wife, holding themselves out to their neighbors as married, were married in law. The agreement and the open living together were the whole of what the law asked. The state's high court settled the rule before the Civil War and applied it again after¹⁸. A valid marriage often left no county record at all, and must be reconstructed from census entries, deeds, church books, and estate files.

Such a marriage carried full effect. It made the survivor a widow or widower for intestacy, and it made the children legitimate¹⁹.

One interruption breaks the run. The legislature outlawed marriage by agreement during the 1890s, and the Code of 1906 repealed the ban²⁰. A couple who began living together between those dates may fall outside the rule, so check the code in force in the year the couple began.

Mississippi ended the practice for good only going forward. A marriage contracted after 5 April 1956 required a license and a ceremony, and the statute expressly preserved every ceremonial or common-law marriage made before that day²¹.

The ceremony route and its records

A couple who chose the formal route went before a territorial judge, an ordained minister who had lodged his credentials with the court, or a justice of the peace, and produced a license²². Quakers, Mennonites, and other societies with the same practice married by the mutual consent of the parties, declared openly before their congregation, and the society's clerk returned a certificate²³.

The license issued from the register of the orphans' court of the county where the woman usually lived, on a bond of $200 conditioned that there was no lawful cause to obstruct the marriage. The officiant then returned a certificate to be recorded²⁴. Two points follow for research. Look in the bride's county rather than the groom's. And the bond, the consent, the license, and the return are four separate papers, kept by the register of the orphans' court in the early period and by the circuit clerk later.

Marriages the law forbade

Marriage within the prohibited degrees of kindred — too closely related — was incestuous and void, and first cousins by blood were within the ban from 1922²⁵.

Marriage across the color line was barred by a chain of statutes, and the line moved four times:

• 1865 — a felony punishable by imprisonment for life. The act reached anyone descended from a Black ancestor to the third generation inclusive, though one ancestor of each generation may have been white²⁶.
• 1880 — the revised code made such a marriage incestuous and void where the person had one-quarter or more Black ancestry, punishable by a fine of up to $500, imprisonment for up to ten years, or both²⁷.
• 1890 — the new Constitution made the marriage unlawful and void at one-eighth or more²⁸.
• 1906 — the code kept the one-eighth rule, added one-eighth or more Mongolian ancestry, and reached a couple who married outside Mississippi and returned²⁹.

The rule became unenforceable with Loving v. Virginia in 1967, and the voters repealed the constitutional text in 1987³⁰.

Enslaved people and freed people

Marriage was for free persons³¹, so no civil marriage record exists for enslaved couples.

That changed in one stroke. The 1865 act declared that freed people who then lived, and had before lived, together as husband and wife were held in law as legally married, and their children legitimate for all purposes. It also let freed people marry each other under the ordinary rules, with the clerk of probate keeping a separate record³². In law the marriage dated from the beginning of the cohabitation, which is usually before emancipation. Separate marriage registers appear in some counties from 1865, and a couple recognized by this act may have no earlier document of any kind.

Property Ownership

Which men could own land

A free adult man could buy, hold, sell, and mortgage land on his own authority, and his deeds were recorded in the county. Enslaved men had no legal capacity to own property. Nothing could even be bought from an enslaved person without the owner's written leave³³.

Women and land ownership

For a woman, everything turned on whether she was married. A single woman or widow — a feme sole, or “woman alone” — could buy, own, sell, mortgage, sue, and be sued exactly as a man could³⁴. A woman transacting freely in the deed books before the Civil War is almost always unmarried or widowed.

A married woman was a feme covert, or “covered woman,” under coverture. That was the common-law rule that a wife's legal identity merged into her husband's, so that her goods became his and he managed her land during the marriage.

The married women's acts

Under the act of 15 February 1839 a married woman could take property, real or personal, in her own name, by gift, purchase, bequest, or a share of an estate, provided it did not come from her husband after the wedding. The rest of the act dealt with enslaved people, and that is where its protection against creditors sits. Those a woman owned when she married, and any who came to her during the marriage, stayed hers and answered for none of her husband's debts. Her husband kept their control and the direction of their labor, and took what that labor produced. A suit over them ran in the names of husband and wife together, and a sale took a deed signed by both³⁵.

So the act gave a married woman ownership without control, and its shield against creditors covered the enslaved people she owned rather than her property at large. It grew out of a Chickasaw case decided in 1837, in which the state's high court protected Betsy Love Allen against a creditor of her husband who had seized a man she owned separately³⁶. Further acts followed in 1846 and 1857. A wife's separate property appears in the deed books under her own name, and a deed selling enslaved people she owned carries both her signature and her husband's.

The Revised Code of 1857 turned that ownership into something a woman could use. Property a single woman owned stayed hers as fully after marriage as before. Property coming to a married woman by will, descent, distribution, deed, or recovery was hers as separate property, beyond the reach of her husband's debts, and her husband could not sell, mortgage, or burden it unless she joined in the conveyance and acknowledged it³⁷. The rents and profits of her estate were hers too. She could buy property with her own money and take the deed in her own name, and where her husband bought in his own name with her money he held it only as her trustee³⁸. She could rent her lands, hire out the people she owned, and lend her money in her own name, and her contracts for the plantation, the family's supplies, and the children's schooling bound her separate property³⁹. From 1857, then, a married woman appears in the deed books, the account books, and the courts in her own right.

Full capacity arrived with the Revised Code of 1880. Married women were freed from every disability on account of coverture, and a wife had the same power as anyone else to acquire, hold, manage, use, and dispose of property of all kinds, to contract about it, and to sue and be sued⁴⁰. The same code stopped a husband from farming his wife's land in his own name: business done with the wife's means was deemed to be on her account⁴¹. The Constitution of 1890 then forbade the legislature ever to create a distinction between men and women in the power to acquire, own, and dispose of property⁴². Spouses still could not contract with each other for wages⁴³. A married woman's own deeds run in the county land records from 1880 onward and are direct evidence of her apart from her husband.

When a wife had to sign her husband's deed

A wife's signature, or its absence, dates a Mississippi deed and tells you whether the man was married. Two different rules produced it, and they do not overlap.

Before 1880 the driver was dower: a widow's life estate in one-third of her husband's land, meaning the use of that third for her lifetime rather than ownership of it. Dower reached land the husband had already sold, so a purchaser needed the wife to release it, and the release had a prescribed form. A married woman's land passed by her deed only after she had been examined privately, apart from her husband, before a judge or a justice. She had to state that she signed the deed as her own voluntary act, freely and without fear or threat from her husband. The officer then wrote a certificate of that examination on or under the deed and signed it, and the deed released her dower⁴⁴. That is the privy examination, or “private questioning,” and its certificate is part of the recorded deed. The requirement ran the length of the period before 1880, and by 1857 it applied to a married woman's deed whether she signed jointly with her husband or separately⁴⁵.

How much land dower reached changed once in the middle. The act of 1822 gave the widow dower in land her husband had already conveyed unless she had released it, so a purchaser needed her signature on every sale⁴⁶. The Revised Code of 1857 narrowed that to land conveyed otherwise than in good faith and for a fair price⁴⁷, which left an honest purchaser secure without her. The same code required her to join in any conveyance of her own separate property, so wives went on signing for a different reason.

Two details repay attention. A wife could give up dower after the deed had already been recorded, by going through the same examination later, and that certificate was recorded in the same court⁴⁸. A dower release may therefore carry a date years after the sale it completes. Her age also moved with the law. In the territorial period a married woman under 21 could not convey land or release dower at all⁴⁹, while by 1857 a married woman could release dower in any real estate although under 21⁵⁰. A privately examined wife before statehood had reached 21; after 1857 she need not have.

From 1880 the driver was the homestead. No conveyance, mortgage, or deed of trust on the homestead was valid unless the owner's spouse signed it⁵¹.

The homestead rule cuts both ways for the researcher. A deed after 1880 signed by one spouse alone is evidence the land was not the homestead, or that the grantor was unmarried. A deed signed by both is evidence of a marriage existing on its date. Where the other spouse had been declared incompetent, the owner petitioned the chancery court for leave to convey alone, and that petition is a chancery record⁵².

Which children could own land

A child could own land at any age, taking it by inheritance, gift, devise (a gift of land by will), or purchase just as an adult did. Managing it was the constraint. A guardian held and managed the land. A sale required the court's order after an inquiry into whether the rents and profits were enough to maintain and educate the child. The guardian then advertised, sold at public auction, reported to the court, and made the deed⁵³. Own at any age; convey freely at 21.

Witnessing a deed

A witness of any age could serve, provided they understood an oath and could relate what they had seen. No Mississippi statute set a minimum age for a deed witness. The general witness act asked only for competency, which the court judged, and a deed was proved for record by the oath of a subscribing witness — the practical reason witnesses were adults, since one might have to appear in court years later⁵⁴.

Free people of color and Native people

Free people of color could acquire, own, and convey land in Mississippi, and did so throughout the antebellum decades⁵⁵. What the law restricted was not ownership but residence. A free person of color could live in Mississippi only under a permission granted by act of the legislature or under a license regularly granted⁵⁶. Those legislative permissions and county licenses are the founding documents of a free family of color, and they are court and legislative records rather than deeds.

The 1865 act let freed people acquire and dispose of personal property to the same extent that white persons might, and sue and be sued in all the courts. But it forbade them to rent or lease land except inside incorporated towns and cities⁵⁷. That leasing bar was overtaken by federal Reconstruction, and freed people bought and recorded land in the county books from the later 1860s onward.

Choctaw and Chickasaw land passed into individual ownership by treaty. The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek (1830) ceded the Choctaw domain but allowed individual Choctaws to claim reservations of land and stay as residents. The Treaty of Pontotoc Creek (1832) provided for the survey, allotment, and sale of the Chickasaw lands. Both produced their own federal registers alongside the deeds by which Native allottees sold to incoming settlers, and Mississippi taxed those reservations once they became private⁵⁸.

Inheritance

One system for land and goods

When a person died without a will — intestate — Mississippi divided land and goods by one set of rules. From 1807, personal property that was not left by will — money, livestock, furniture, debts owed to the deceased, and before 1865 enslaved people — descended to the heirs in the same way as land⁵⁹. That rule carried through every later code⁶⁰. When a Mississippi estate file divides land and goods by the same fractions, that is why.

Who took the land

Land not left by will descended to the children and their descendants in equal parts from the Territory's first digest onward, the descendants of a dead child taking that child's share among them. Where there were no children or their descendants, it went to the brothers and sisters and the father and mother; failing them, to grandparents, uncles, and aunts; and failing them, to the next of kin in equal degree. Degree was counted by the rules of the civil law, which count the steps up from the deceased to a common ancestor and back down to the relative. Only the descendants of brothers and sisters could stand in a dead relative's place; no other collateral branch could⁶¹. Relatives of the half blood, who shared one parent with the deceased, took a share alongside relatives of the whole blood, who shared both — except that in the same degree the whole blood was preferred⁶².

Daughters inherited equally with sons from the beginning, and no eldest son took the land alone. For the researcher this means a Mississippi land division ordinarily names every surviving child.

The widow's share

The widow's position changed once, in 1880, and the change is sharp enough to date a record.

Dower and curtesy — curtesy being the widower's matching life interest in his late wife's land — were abolished together by the Revised Code of 1880⁷⁰. After that a widow with two children took one-third of everything and owned it, and a widow with four children took one-fifth. Getting the fraction right can make or break a family reconstruction built from an estate division. Where the estate could not pay its debts, the territorial widow was given one-third only⁷¹.

Dower had to be assigned before the widow could enjoy it, and the assignment is its own record. She petitioned the orphans' court of the county where her husband had usually lived, naming the lands. The court then sent the sheriff to summon five disinterested landowners, who on oath measured off her third or half by its boundaries, put her in possession, and set off her portion of the personal estate at the same time⁷². Until that was done she kept the dwelling house and plantation rent free⁷³. A widower had the matching interest, curtesy, allotted the same way⁷⁴.

One dower rule created a record of its own, and it is among the most valuable in Mississippi for African American research. Where enslaved people were left to a widow for life in place of dower, or held by anyone for a life estate, the holder had sixty days to lodge a list with the clerk of the probate court. The list named every one of them and gave their ages and sexes, and the clerk entered it in a bound book kept for the purpose. Every child born to them afterwards had to be registered the same way⁷⁵. These registers name enslaved people individually and record births.

Two further provisions ran alongside the share. The widow, or the widow and children, took the exempt personal property, and a year's provisions, clothing, and a year's tuition for the children were set apart during administration⁷⁶. A widow also had the exclusive use of her husband's exempt property, real and personal, for as long as she remained a widow and used it⁷⁷. Each is a separate court paper, and each usually names the widow and the children.

Renouncing the will

A surviving husband or wife who disliked the will could renounce it within six months of probate — the proving of the will in court — and take the intestate share instead. Where no child or descendant survived, the renouncing spouse took one-half rather than the whole. Where the will made no provision at all, the survivor took the same share without any formal renunciation⁷⁸. A renunciation is filed in the estate papers and is a plain statement that the couple were married.

Guardians and the age of fourteen

A minor inherited at once, but the property was managed by a guardian appointed by the court. From 1807 the county court sat as the Orphans' Court to prove wills, to grant letters of administration (the written authority to settle the estate of someone who left no will), and to appoint guardians to minors. The clerk of the county court served as its register and kept its records separate, recording the wills, the inventories and appraisements, and the accounts⁷⁹. That jurisdiction later moved to the chancery courts, which is where the files sit for the twentieth century.

A guardian gave bond, filed an inventory of the minor's real and personal estate within three months, and accounted once a year, the approved accounts being recorded⁸¹. The final settlement at 21 is one of the most valuable documents in Mississippi genealogy. It dates the minor's majority, and so approximates a birth year, and it frequently reveals a young woman's married surname.

At fourteen a minor could choose their own guardian, and the court allowed the choice. Below fourteen the court appointed⁸². The rule was already in working order in 1839, when an orphan of fourteen or over chose by petition, signed before the judge of probate or a justice of the peace and recorded by the register of the orphans' court⁸³. Where the child chose someone other than the natural guardian, the court could appoint the natural guardian instead. Where a child of fourteen failed to appear and choose, the court summoned them to the next term and then appointed as if the child were under fourteen. The Revised Code of 1857 carried the same scheme over to the probate court and added two rules. A guardian was to be appointed for the estate of any minor who owned property, even where a parent was living. And a child of fourteen living in another state but owning Mississippi land could make the choice before a court of record where they lived⁸⁴. The rule outlasted 1950, still requiring a petition from a minor over fourteen at the end of it⁸⁵.

That petition is the document to look for. It is signed by the child, so it is evidence the child had reached 14, which brackets a birth year, and it names the guardian the child wanted.

By the twentieth century the father and mother were joint natural guardians with equal rights. On the death of one, the guardianship passed to the survivor automatically, so only a surviving parent could appoint a guardian by will⁸⁶. Guardianship ended at 21.

Children born outside marriage

A child born outside marriage inherited from and through the mother and her kindred, and the mother and her kindred inherited from the child, exactly as if the child had been born in marriage⁸⁷.

On the father's side the route was legitimation, and Mississippi opened it early. From 1807, where a man had a child by a woman and afterwards married her, the child was legitimated if he recognized it⁸⁸. Both the marriage and the recognition were needed. For the children of formerly enslaved couples the 1865 act did the work wholesale, making them legitimate for all purposes as to both parents⁸⁹.

Where paternity was established rather than acknowledged, a jury assessed damages payable by the adjudged father to the mother, or to the child if the mother had died, for a term of years not exceeding eighteen. The assessment became a judgment and a lien on his property⁹⁰. These proceedings name the mother, the child, and the reputed father.

Making a will

The age to make a will was 21, for land and goods alike, throughout the period⁹¹. The maker had to be of sound and disposing mind.

The number of witnesses changed once. A will had to be attested — signed by witnesses who saw the maker sign — by three or more respectable witnesses in the territorial period⁹². From Hutchinson's code of 1848, two credible witnesses were enough⁹³. A will wholly written and signed by the maker's own hand needed no witnesses at all⁹⁴, and these handwritten wills are common in the Mississippi record. A spoken will was allowed only in narrow straits. It had to be made in the maker's last sickness, at home or where the maker had lived for the ten days before death, and it could pass more than $100 only if two witnesses proved that the maker had called on someone present to bear witness⁹⁵.

A witness to a will could be of any age; what mattered was that the witness had nothing to gain. A gift to a witness who signed the will was void where the will could not otherwise be proved, which left the witness disinterested and able to be compelled to testify to the rest. If the witness would have inherited had there been no will, that much of the share was saved⁹⁶.

Age worked one way for an executor — the person a will names to carry it out — and another for an administrator, the person the court appoints to settle an estate left without a will. Under the territorial act, where a will named an executor who was still a minor, the court granted administration to another person for the years of the minority. From Hutchinson's code of 1848 the statute provided that letters granted to someone under 21 were good, and that the bond such a person gave was as valid and binding as if given by an adult⁹⁷. A young executor or administrator in a Mississippi estate file is therefore not an error, though the record is not by itself evidence that the person had turned 21.

Sex was never a bar. A woman could serve as executrix under a will or as administratrix by appointment, and a surviving wife stood first in the order of preference for letters of administration⁹⁸. Women appear in both roles throughout the Mississippi estate files, and a widow named as administratrix is often the first record to state a marriage.

Taxation

What was taxed

Two taxes on individuals leave usable records. The first is the poll tax, a flat tax laid on the person rather than on property — a “poll” being simply a head, and the same thing as a capitation. The second is the property tax on land, town lots, stock in trade, and, before 1865, enslaved people. The poll tax is the prize for genealogy, because it lists people who owned nothing, which makes the rolls serve as census substitutes.

Territorial polls

The territorial revenue act of 1807 laid one dollar on every free white male above 21 and under 50; one dollar on every free man of color between 18 and 50; and seventy-five cents on every enslaved person, payable by the owner⁹⁹. The age gap is the useful fact. A free man of color became taxable three years before his white neighbor, so free families of color can often be identified in the earliest lists by the age at which their men were entered.

Statehood to the Civil War

Statehood in 1817 did not change the shape of the tax. The legislature passed revenue acts through the 1820s and 1830s that kept the same structure of a poll on adult free males and a property tax alongside it. The revenue chapter of Hutchinson's code of 1848 compiles those acts and is the place to trace a rate for any single year between 1798 and 1848¹⁰⁰.

The revenue act of 1844 put the rates on a fuller footing: fifty cents on every free white male between 21 and 50; one dollar and a half, three times as much, on every free male of color between 21 and 50; seventy-five cents for every enslaved person over five and under sixty; and twenty-five cents for every enslaved person under five¹⁰¹. Every person was assessed in the county where he or she resided, and personal property in the county where it lay¹⁰². A man's poll entry therefore places him in a county in a given year, and an enslaved person appears as a number in the owner's assessment rather than by name.

The freed people's poll tax of 1865

One tax stands on its own. The county police boards were directed to levy a poll or capitation tax of up to one dollar a year on every freed person and free person of color between 18 and 60. The proceeds formed a Freedman's Pauper Fund for the support of the poor among them, and failure to pay was made evidence of vagrancy¹⁰³. These lists cover a population that appears in few other records of 1866 and 1867.

Reconstruction to 1890

The poll tax survived the war. The revenue chapters of the Revised Code of 1871 and the Revised Code of 1880 carried it forward on adult males, and the racial classifications that had set different rates before the war disappeared from them. Those two chapters are the place to check a rate or an age limit for any year between 1866 and 1890¹⁰⁴.

After 1890

The Constitution of 1890 imposed a uniform poll tax of two dollars on every male inhabitant between 21 and 60, applied to the common schools alone. It exempted persons deaf and dumb or blind, or maimed by the loss of a hand or foot. County boards could add up to a dollar more, and no criminal proceeding could be used to collect it¹⁰⁵.

The same constitution made payment the price of voting. An elector had to have paid all taxes legally required of him for the two preceding years by 1 February and to produce evidence of it. From 1892 he also had to read a section of the constitution, or understand it when read to him, or give a reasonable interpretation of it¹⁰⁶. The rolls after 1890 therefore list the adult male population aged 21 to 60, and whether a man paid.

When a man drops off a poll list while still alive elsewhere in the record, an exemption or simply his 50th or 60th birthday is usually the explanation.

Courts

Jury service

In the Territory a juror had to be 21 or over and under 60, free of any continuing sickness, and never convicted of felony, perjury, forgery, cheating, or conspiracy¹⁰⁷.

Between statehood and Reconstruction the qualification sat in the jury chapter of each compilation — Hutchinson's code of 1848 and the Revised Code of 1857. Service was confined to free white men throughout those years, and the line of descent from those chapters runs straight through to the section the Supreme Court quoted in Gibson v. Mississippi in 1896¹⁰⁸.

Under the Revised Code of 1871 a competent juror was a male citizen of Mississippi who was also a citizen of the United States, between twenty-one and sixty, and a householder — the head of a household, whether or not he owned the land he lived on. Conviction of a felony was the one disqualification, and a man over sixty who did not claim his exemption was a qualified juror all the same¹⁰⁹. This was the first Mississippi jury statute to carry no racial qualification.

Under the Revised Code of 1880 the test came down to three things: age, citizenship, and a clean record. Every male citizen of the United States who was 21 or over and under 60 was qualified to serve in the county where he lived, provided he had never been convicted of an infamous crime — one of the serious offenses that carried lasting disgrace¹¹⁰.

From 1890 a single test governed, and it ran through 1950: a juror had to be a qualified elector who could read and write. The Constitution of 1890 said so directly and left the legislature to provide for listing the men who met it. The legislature could add to that test but not lower it, and the Code of 1892 added to it by directing the board of supervisors to take the registration books of voters as their guide and to list men of good intelligence, sound judgment, and fair character¹¹¹.

Being a voter was therefore a condition of serving, so the poll tax and the reading test described above reached straight into the jury box. A Mississippi jury list between 1890 and 1950 is a list of taxpaying, literate men, and in practice a list of white men.

Criminal responsibility

Until 1940 the common-law ages governed, and the state's high court stated them plainly. A child under 7 was incapable of committing a crime. A child of 7 to 13 was presumed to lack capacity, a presumption the State could rebut. A child of 14 or over was presumed to have it¹¹².

Mississippi then built a separate system for children in three stages, and each stage moved the line:

• 1916 — the first juvenile court act, reaching every child under 18. On a finding that a child of 7 to 18 was delinquent, destitute, or abandoned, the court could commit the child to the state training school or release the child on probation¹¹³.
• 1940 — the second juvenile court act created juvenile departments in the chancery, circuit, and county courts, and set the first statutory minimum age. No child under 14 could be proceeded against criminally, and no child under 18 could be prosecuted at all until the juvenile court ordered it¹¹⁴.
• 1946 — the Youth Court Act repealed the earlier laws and gave exclusive jurisdiction to a youth court division of the county court, or of the chancery court where the county had none. A child meant a person under 18, and the proceeding was civil: the decree could not recite guilt and was not admissible against the child in any other court. The minimum age moved to 13, and a child of 13 or over charged with what would be a felony in an adult could be sent to the criminal court¹¹⁵.

Each stage moved the paper as well as the line. From 1916 a child's case may sit in the chancery court rather than on the criminal docket. From 1946 it is a youth court file, and those are closed.

Witnesses

A witness of any age could testify who understood the obligation of an oath and could relate what they had seen. The trial judge decided competency and questioned a child personally, and no statute set a figure¹¹⁶. A witness could swear by solemn affirmation instead of an oath, in criminal cases as well as civil¹¹⁷.

Women as witnesses and jurors

Women could testify. By the twentieth century husband and wife were competent witnesses for each other, and against each other in disputes between themselves¹¹⁸.

Jury service was for men. Women held public office in Mississippi well before they were eligible for a jury¹¹⁹, and as late as 1948 the jury statute still reached men alone¹²⁰. The legislature admitted them in 1968¹²¹. Any Mississippi jury list before 1968 is a list of men.

People of color as witnesses and jurors

Before the Civil War, people of color could give evidence only for and against each other. The territorial rule reached all people of African or Native descent, to the third generation, whether enslaved or free, and made them competent witnesses only in cases between other people of color¹²². An enslaved person could testify only in a criminal case concerning another enslaved person¹²³. The Revised Code of 1857 put the rule in its final antebellum form: a person of color, enslaved or free, was a good witness in prosecutions for or against people of color, and in civil cases where free people of color alone were parties, and in no other case¹²⁴.

The 1865 act widened competency a little, adding the cases in which a freed person or free person of color was a party¹²⁵.

Reconstruction replaced the racial test with one of interest and relationship. Under the Revised Code of 1871 a party to a suit, or anyone with something to gain by it, was a competent witness in any court of the state all the same. Husband and wife could testify for each other in every case, and neither was required to testify against the other for the prosecution¹²⁶. Race no longer entered the question, in that code or after it. The juror qualification set out above reached every man who met it¹⁰⁹, so Black men were eligible to serve. The elector qualifications of 1890 described above then kept them off in practice.

Sources and Where to Verify

Constitutions

• Mississippi Constitution of 1890. § 94 (no distinction between men and women in property); art. 12, §§ 241, 243, 244 (elector qualifications, poll tax, reading test); art. 14, § 263 (interracial marriage, repealed 1987); § 264 (grand and petit jurors to be qualified electors able to read and write, amended 1960); § 159 (chancery court jurisdiction). Annotated text. Mississippi Secretary of State. https://www.sos.ms.gov/content/documents/ed_pubs/pubs/Mississippi_Constitution.pdf.
• Mississippi Constitution of 1890. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hne9m7.
• Mississippi Constitution of 1890, as originally adopted. Mississippi History Now (Mississippi Department of Archives and History). https://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/mississippi-constitution-of-1890-as-originally-adopted.
• Thorpe, Francis Newton, ed. The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909. The texts of the Mississippi constitutions of 1817, 1832, 1868, and 1890.

Codes and Compilations

• Alden, T. J. Fox, and J. A. Van Hoesen, comps. A Digest of the Laws of Mississippi, Comprising All the Laws of a General Nature, Including the Acts of the Session of 1839. New York: Alexander Gould, 1839. Prints the married women's property act of 15 February 1839 in full at pp. 920–21, and the orphans' court act setting the age of fourteen for a minor's choice of guardian. Digital images. Google Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=sKNXAAAAcAAJ.
• Hutchinson, A., comp. Code of Mississippi: Being an Analytical Compilation of the Public and General Statutes of the Territory and State … from 1798 to 1848. Jackson, Miss.: Published for the compiler by Price and Fall, State Printers, 1848. The bridge volume between the territorial digests and the state codes: ch. 8 is the revenue chapter, ch. 34 marriage, ch. 35 bastardy, ch. 36 the orphans' court, ch. 44 descents, ch. 49 wills, ch. 61 juries. Digital images. Google Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=ph9GAQAAIAAJ.
• Mississippi. The Revised Code of the Statute Laws of the State of Mississippi. Jackson, Miss.: E. Barksdale, State Printer, 1857. The essential antebellum volume: ch. XXIII (poor), ch. XXXIII (slaves and free people of color), ch. XXXVI (real estate and the privy examination), ch. XL (marriage and the separate property of married women), ch. LX (probate court, guardians, dower, and distribution), ch. 61 (juries). Digital images. Google Books. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_Code_of_the_Statute_Laws_of/u1qwAAAAMAAJ.
• Mississippi. The Revised Code of the Statute Laws of the State of Mississippi, as Adopted at January Session, A.D. 1871. Jackson, Miss.: Alcorn & Fisher, 1871. The Reconstruction volume: the juror qualification at § 724 and the witness sections at §§ 756–760. Digital images. Google Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=Ur0ZAAAAYAAJ.
• Mississippi. The Revised Code of the Statute Laws of the State of Mississippi. Jackson, Miss.: J. L. Power, State Printer, 1880. The pivotal volume: dower and curtesy abolished, coverture abolished, the homestead joinder rule, the widow's child's part, and the jury section quoted in Gibson v. Mississippi. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015062918084.
• Mississippi. The Annotated Code of the General Statute Laws of the State of Mississippi. Prepared by R. H. Thompson, George G. Dillard, and R. B. Campbell. Nashville, Tenn.: Marshall & Bruce, Law Publishers, 1892. The Code of 1892, carrying the descent, dower, marriage, jury, and wills sections cited above.
• Mississippi. The Mississippi Code of 1906 of the Public Statute Laws of the State of Mississippi. Prepared and annotated by A. H. Whitfield, T. C. Catchings, and W. H. Hardy. Nashville, Tenn.: Brandon Printing Company, 1906. Carries the interracial marriage section at § 3244 and repeals the ban on marriage by agreement at § 3249.
• Mississippi. The Annotated Mississippi Code, Showing the General Statutes in Force August 1, 1917, Embracing the Code of 1906 as Amended. Edited by William Hemingway. 2 vols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1917. Cited above as Hemingway's Code (1917). A second edition followed as Annotated Mississippi Code, Containing All General Statutes of Mississippi in Force January 1, 1927, 2 vols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, [1927]. Cited above as Hemingway's Code (1927). Sections 2725–2727 of the 1927 edition, on unlawful marriages, are transcribed by the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale. https://macmillan.yale.edu/glc/annotated-mississippi-code.
• Mississippi. Mississippi Code of 1930 of the Public Statute Laws of the State of Mississippi. Revised and annotated by the Code Commission. 2 vols. Atlanta: Harrison Company, 1930.
• Mississippi. Mississippi Code 1942, Annotated: Containing Permanent Public Statutes of Mississippi to the End of the Legislative Session 1942. Published under the supervision of Greek L. Rice and George H. Ethridge. Atlanta, Ga.: Harrison Company; Rochester, N.Y.: Lawyers Co-operative Publishing Company, 1943–44. The code in force at the close of this period and the volume most often cited above.
• Mississippi Code of 1972, with the full citation chain printed after each section back to Hutchinson's 1848. Justia. https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/.
• Mississippi State Law Library. Historic codes of Mississippi, 1799–1942. A gallery of title-page images, one for each code, with the library's transcription and collation of each, and with Judge Robert Harvey Thompson's histories taken from his 1926 address to the Mississippi State Bar Association. Archived copy, Internet Archive Wayback Machine, capture of 23 November 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20161123054401/http://library.courts.ms.gov/MSCodes1892-1942.htm.
• Poindexter, George, rev. The Revised Code of the Laws of Mississippi, in which are Comprised All Such Acts of the General Assembly of a Public Nature as Were in Force at the End of the Year 1823. Natchez: Printed by F. Baker, 1824. The early state volume: the conveyances chapter (privy examination), ch. 87 on dower, and the Orphans' Court chapter on guardians. Digital images. Internet Archive, Early State Records Project. https://archive.org/details/esrp769261878.
• Toulmin, Harry, comp. The Statutes of the Mississippi Territory, Revised and Digested by the Authority of the General Assembly. Natchez: Samuel Terrell, Printer to the Mississippi Territory, 1807. The indispensable territorial volume: wills and intestates' estates, guardians, marriage, conveyances, witnesses, juries, slaves, and revenue. Digital images. Internet Archive, Early State Records Project. https://archive.org/details/esrp769261771.

Session Laws

• Laws of Mississippi, 1839. Ch. 46, “An Act for the Protection and Preservation of the Rights and Property of Married Women,” approved 15 February 1839, pp. 72–73. Original in the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, microfilm roll 2502. The text of the act is printed in Alden and Van Hoesen, Digest (1839), above, at pp. 920–21.
• Laws of the State of Mississippi, Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature, Held in the City of Jackson, October, November and December, 1865. Jackson: J. J. Shannon & Co., State Printers, 1866. Ch. IV, civil rights of freedmen, §§ 1–4; ch. VI, vagrancy, §§ 6–7 (the poll tax). Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0001929140. Transcription. Teaching Legal History, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. https://teachinglegalhistory.unl.edu/s/oer/item/2089.
• Laws of the State of Mississippi. Session volumes by year, for the acts cited above that have no separate entry here: the conveyance act of 4 March 1803; the act of 1805 on the liberation of slaves; and the dower act of 13 June 1822. The acts of 1805 and 1822 are in the Early State Records scan of the session laws, 1799–1837. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/esrp434459643.
• Laws of the State of Mississippi. Session volumes for 1846, 1894, 1922, 1924, 1946, 1956, and 1968, all full view. The married women's act of 1846; 1894, ch. 69 (jurors); 1922, ch. 195 (juvenile court amendments) and ch. 235 (prohibited marriages); 1924, ch. 169 (homestead); 1946, ch. 207 (Youth Court Act); 1956, ch. 239 (license and solemnization required); 1968, ch. 335 (women admitted to jury service). Digital images. HathiTrust. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100790220; https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100671358.
• Laws of the State of Mississippi … Commencing January 6, 1914, Ending March 28, 1914. Memphis, Tenn.: Press of E. H. Clarke & Bro., 1914. Ch. 208, the juror qualification. Digital images. Google Books. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Laws_of_the_State_of_Mississippi/MgZGAQAAIAAJ.
• Laws of the State of Mississippi … Commencing January 4, 1916, Ending April 8, 1916. Memphis, Tenn.: E. H. Clarke & Bro., 1916. Ch. 111, the first juvenile court act. Digital images. Google Books. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Acts_Passed_at_the_Session_of_the_Genera/kilAAQAAMAAJ.
• Laws of the State of Mississippi … Commencing on Tuesday, January 6, 1948, and Ending Wednesday, April 14, 1948. [Jackson]: Published by authority, 1948. Ch. 429, amending the Youth Court Act. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3683532&seq=5.
• Laws of the State of Mississippi. Session volumes for 1938, ch. 303 (jurors), and 1940, ch. 300 (the second juvenile court act). HathiTrust record https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100143507. The 1938 jury chapter is confirmed against the history line printed at Miss. Code Ann. § 13-5-1, and the 1940 juvenile court act against Wheeler v. Shoemake, 213 Miss. 374 (1952).
• Laws of the State of Mississippi. Session volumes after this period, for the terminal dates given above: 1955, ch. 540 (legitimation); 1960, ch. 502, and 1962, ch. 308 (juror qualifications); 1970, ch. 324 (will age lowered to 18); 1974, ch. 446 (executors); 1987, ch. 672 (repeal of the interracial-marriage clause). Cited from the citation chains printed in the current code.

Court Cases

• Beason v. State. 96 Miss. 105; 50 So. 488 (1909).
• Black v. State. 187 So. 2d 815 (Miss. 1966). Traces the statutory history of the juror qualification from the Constitution of 1890 through the amendment of 1960 and the act of 1962. https://law.justia.com/cases/mississippi/supreme-court/1966/43928-0.html.
• Bryant v. Brown. 151 Miss. 398; 118 So. 184 (1928).
• Dickerson v. Brown. 49 Miss. 357 (1873). Marriage by agreement after the Civil War.
• Fisher v. Allen. 2 Howard (Miss.) 611 (1837).
• Gibson v. Mississippi. 162 U.S. 565 (1896). Quotes the jury section of the Revised Code of 1880 in full and traces its descent. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/162/565/.
• Greene v. Greene. 145 Miss. 87; 110 So. 218 (1926).
• Hargroves v. Thompson. 31 Miss. 211 (1858). The antebellum authority for marriage by agreement.
• Holmes v. State. 133 Miss. 610; 98 So. 104 (1923).
• Hunt v. Hunt. 172 Miss. 732; 161 So. 119 (1935).
• Jones v. Lamensdorf. 175 Miss. 565; 167 So. 624 (1936).
• Joslin v. State. 75 Miss. 838; 23 So. 515 (1898).
• Loving v. Virginia. 388 U.S. 1 (1967).
• McLeiter v. Buckley. 148 Miss. 75; 114 So. 128 (1927).
• Miles v. State. 99 Miss. 165; 54 So. 946 (1911).
• Rundle v. Pegram. 49 Miss. 751 (1874). Marriage by agreement.
• Schmitz v. Summers. 179 Miss. 260; 174 So. 569 (1937).
• Smith v. State. 229 So. 2d 551 (Miss. 1969). https://law.justia.com/cases/mississippi/supreme-court/1969/45554-0.html.
• Spencer v. O'Bryant. 140 Miss. 474; 106 So. 6 (1925).
• Swanzy v. Kolb. 94 Miss. 10; 46 So. 549 (1908).
• Sykes v. Sykes. 162 Miss. 487; 139 So. 853 (1932).
• Tiser v. McCain. 113 Miss. 776; 74 So. 660 (1917).
• Triplett v. State. 169 Miss. 306; 152 So. 881 (1934).
• Wheeler v. Shoemake. 213 Miss. 374; 57 So. 2d 267 (1952). Sets out the whole statutory history of Mississippi juvenile court legislation. https://law.justia.com/cases/mississippi/supreme-court/1952/38203-0.html.
• Williams v. Mississippi. 170 U.S. 213 (1898).

Secondary and Reference Works

• FamilySearch Research Wiki. “Mississippi Land and Property.” County land records and the custody of deeds. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Mississippi_Land_and_Property.
• Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “A Contested Presence: Free Blacks in Antebellum Mississippi, 1820–1860.” Mississippi History Now. Gathers the registration and removal statutes and gives the pages in the 1848 and 1857 codes. https://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/a-contested-presence-free-blacks-in-antebellum-mississippi-18201860.
• Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Finding aids to government records, including county court, chancery, probate, and tax series. https://finding.mdah.ms.gov/.
• Mississippi Encyclopedia. “Married Women's Property Act.” https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/married-womens-property-act/.
• National Park Service, Natchez Trace Parkway. “Betsy Love — The First Married American Woman to Gain Rights to Property.” https://home.nps.gov/articles/000/betsy-love-the-first-american-woman-to-gain-rights-to-property.htm.
• Reynolds, Jimmie B. “Constitutional Law — Application of Basic Constitutional Guarantees to Juveniles.” Mississippi Law Journal 39 (1967): 121, 124–25. A short account of the 1916, 1940, and 1946 juvenile statutes and how they were codified.
• Schumaker, Kathryn. “‘Unlawful Intimacy’: Mixed-Race Families, Miscegenation Law, and the Legal Culture of Progressive Era Mississippi.” Law and History Review 41 (November 2023): 773–94. Open access. Traces the color line through the codes of 1880, 1890, and 1906, and records the brief ban on marriage by agreement in the 1890s. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0738248023000317.
• Sims, Amanda K. “Patriarchy and Property: The Nineteenth-Century Mississippi Married Women's Property Acts.” MA thesis, Brigham Young University, 2007. On the 1839, 1846, and 1857 acts and the deeds they produced. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/1433.
• University of Mississippi Libraries. “Mississippi as Province & Territory.” Colonial and territorial court and land records of the Natchez district. https://guides.lib.olemiss.edu/ms_province.
• U.S. Women's Bureau. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for Mississippi. By Sara L. Buchanan, assisted by Mary L. Sullivan and Elizabeth Batson. Bulletin of the Women's Bureau, No. 157-23 (Revised). Washington: Government Printing Office, 1949. The best single summary of the law at the close of this period, arranged under 32 numbered topics with Code of 1942 sections throughout. PDF. FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-23-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf. Catalog entry: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/5430/item/539579.

Citations

1. Mississippi Organic Act, 7 April 1798, 1 Stat. 549, adopting the framework of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787; the territorial law gathered in Harry Toulmin, comp., The Statutes of the Mississippi Territory, Revised and Digested by the Authority of the General Assembly (Natchez: Samuel Terrell, Printer to the Mississippi Territory, 1807); digital images, Internet Archive, Early State Records Project (https://archive.org/details/esrp769261771 : accessed 23 July 2026) ↩
2. U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for Mississippi, by Sara L. Buchanan, assisted by Mary L. Sullivan and Elizabeth Batson, Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, No. 157-23 (Revised) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1949); PDF, FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-23-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf : accessed 10 August 2026), 1, stating the working rule that where statutes abrogating common-law principles have not been enacted, the common law applies; and see Hunt v. Hunt, 172 Miss. 732, 744; 161 So. 119 (1935), holding that the marriage-consent statute left the common-law capacity to marry untouched ↩
3. Mississippi, The Revised Code of the Statute Laws of the State of Mississippi (Jackson, Miss.: J. L. Power, State Printer, 1880); digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015062918084 : accessed 23 July 2026), § 1167, abrogating the common law of coverture; carried through the Code of 1892 (Nashville, Tenn.: Marshall & Bruce, 1892), § 2289, the Code of 1906 (Nashville, Tenn.: Brandon Printing Co., 1906), § 2517, Hemingway’s Code (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1917), § 2051, and the Code of 1930 (Atlanta: Harrison Co., 1930), § 1940, to the Code of 1942 (Atlanta: Harrison Co.; Rochester, N.Y.: Lawyers Co-operative, 1943–44), § 451 ↩
4. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), “An Act to raise Supplies and make Appropriations for the Year 1807,” § 2, taxing lands held by British or Spanish patent or order of survey whose right had been confirmed by a Board of Commissioners of the United States ↩
5. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), “An Act concerning Wills and Testaments; the Settlement of Intestates’ Estates; and the Duty of Executors, Administrators, and Guardians,” §§ 16, 18, 27 ↩
6. Laws of Mississippi, 1839, ch. 46, “An Act for the protection and preservation of the rights and property of Married Women,” approved 15 February 1839; printed in full in T. J. Fox Alden and J. A. Van Hoesen, comps., A Digest of the Laws of Mississippi, Comprising All the Laws of a General Nature, Including the Acts of the Session of 1839 (New York: Alexander Gould, 1839), appendix, ch. XXVI, pp. 920–21; digital images, Google Books (https://books.google.com/books?id=sKNXAAAAcAAJ : accessed 27 July 2026). The act occupies pp. 72–73 of the original session volume, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, microfilm roll 2502 ↩
7. Laws of the State of Mississippi, Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature, Held in the City of Jackson, October, November and December, 1865 (Jackson: J. J. Shannon & Co., State Printers, 1866); digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0001929140 : accessed 23 July 2026), ch. IV, “An Act to confer Civil Rights on Freedmen, and for other purposes,” § 3 (approved 25 November 1865) ↩
8. Revised Code of 1880, §§ 1167 (coverture), 1170 (dower and curtesy), 1258 (homestead), 1771 (descent between husband and wife) ↩
9. Mississippi Constitution of 1890, §§ 241, 243, 244 (elector qualifications, poll tax, reading test) and § 264 (grand and petit jurors to be qualified electors able to read and write); Mississippi Secretary of State (https://www.sos.ms.gov/content/documents/ed_pubs/pubs/Mississippi_Constitution.pdf : accessed 23 July 2026) ↩
10. U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for Mississippi, by Sara L. Buchanan, assisted by Mary L. Sullivan and Elizabeth Batson, Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, No. 157-23 (Revised) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1949); PDF, FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-23-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf : accessed 10 August 2026), 3, citing Code of 1942, §§ 681, 684 ↩
11. Legal Status of Women: Mississippi (1949), 3; Greene v. Greene, 145 Miss. 87, 112; 110 So. 218 (1926) ↩
12. Code of 1942, §§ 1267–1268; McLeiter v. Buckley, 148 Miss. 75, 85; 114 So. 128 (1927) ↩
13. U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for Mississippi, by Sara L. Buchanan, assisted by Mary L. Sullivan and Elizabeth Batson, Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, No. 157-23 (Revised) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1949); PDF, FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-23-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf : accessed 10 August 2026), 3, 7, citing Code of 1942, §§ 681, 684; majority turned on age alone, and the marriage statutes at §§ 460–461 assumed that a married person under 21 remained a minor ↩
14. Hunt v. Hunt, 172 Miss. 732, 744; 161 So. 119 (1935), holding that the consent statute left the common-law capacity untouched ↩
15. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), “An Act regulating the Solemnization of Marriages,” § 5 ↩
16. The consent requirement runs through the marriage chapter of every Mississippi compilation: Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 34; Revised Code of 1857, ch. XL; Revised Code of 1871, ch. on marriage; Revised Code of 1880, ch. on marriage; and the marriage chapters of the codes of 1892, 1906, 1917 and 1930 ↩
17. U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for Mississippi, by Sara L. Buchanan, assisted by Mary L. Sullivan and Elizabeth Batson, Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, No. 157-23 (Revised) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1949); PDF, FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-23-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf : accessed 10 August 2026), 7, citing Code of 1942, §§ 460, 461; the section descends from the Code of 1930, § 2363, and Laws of 1930, ch. 237, now Miss. Code Ann. § 93-1-5 ↩
18. Hargroves v. Thompson, 31 Miss. 211 (1858); Dickerson v. Brown, 49 Miss. 357 (1873); Rundle v. Pegram, 49 Miss. 751 (1874) ↩
19. U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for Mississippi, by Sara L. Buchanan, assisted by Mary L. Sullivan and Elizabeth Batson, Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, No. 157-23 (Revised) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1949); PDF, FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-23-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf : accessed 10 August 2026), 8, citing Code of 1942, §§ 461, 465; Jones v. Lamensdorf, 175 Miss. 565, 576; 167 So. 624 (1936); Sykes v. Sykes, 162 Miss. 487; 139 So. 853 (1932) ↩
20. Kathryn Schumaker, “‘Unlawful Intimacy’: Mixed-Race Families, Miscegenation Law, and the Legal Culture of Progressive Era Mississippi,” Law and History Review 41 (November 2023): 773–94, at 777 n. 18, reporting that the legislature briefly outlawed common-law marriage in the 1890s and that the prohibition was repealed by Miss. Code § 3249 (1906); digital images, Cambridge Core (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0738248023000317 : accessed 10 August 2026). Confirm the year of the ban and its exact wording in the marriage chapter of the Code of 1892 before relying on it for a given couple ↩
21. Laws of 1956, ch. 239, §§ 1–2; Code of 1942, § 465.5, now Miss. Code Ann. § 93-1-15 ↩
22. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), marriage act, §§ 1, 6 ↩
23. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), marriage act, §§ 2, 4 ↩
24. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), marriage act, §§ 5, 7 ↩
25. Laws of 1922, ch. 235; the prohibited-degrees sections descend from Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 34, art. 1 (8), through the Revised Code of 1857, ch. XL, art. 8, the Revised Code of 1871, §§ 1762–1763, the Revised Code of 1880, §§ 1145–1146, the Code of 1892, §§ 2857–2858, the Code of 1906, §§ 3242–3243, Hemingway’s Code (1917), §§ 2549–2550, and the Code of 1930, §§ 2359–2360, to the Code of 1942, §§ 457–458 ↩
26. Laws of the State of Mississippi, Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature, Held in the City of Jackson, October, November and December, 1865 (Jackson: J. J. Shannon & Co., State Printers, 1866); digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0001929140 : accessed 23 July 2026), ch. IV, § 3 ↩
27. Revised Code of 1880, § 1147, placing the marriage among those declared incestuous and void and drawing the line at one-quarter or more African ancestry, with a fine of up to $500, imprisonment for up to ten years, or both; and see Kathryn Schumaker, “‘Unlawful Intimacy,’” Law and History Review 41 (2023): 773–94, at 793, noting that the earlier line stood at one-quarter ↩
28. Mississippi Constitution of 1890, art. 14, § 263; Mississippi Secretary of State (https://www.sos.ms.gov/content/documents/ed_pubs/pubs/Mississippi_Constitution.pdf : accessed 23 July 2026) ↩
29. Code of 1906, § 3244, printed as § 2551 of Hemingway’s Code (1917) and § 2727 of Hemingway’s Code (1927), adding one-eighth or more Mongolian ancestry to the one-eighth rule and reaching an attempt to evade the section by marrying outside the state and returning; the section is transcribed in “Annotated Mississippi Code,” Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University (https://macmillan.yale.edu/glc/annotated-mississippi-code : accessed 10 August 2026); further amended by Laws of 1922, ch. 235 ↩
30. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967); the constitutional text repealed by Laws of 1987, ch. 672 (House Concurrent Resolution No. 13), ratified 3 November 1987 ↩
31. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), marriage act, § 1, authorizing solemnization “between any free persons” ↩
32. Laws of the State of Mississippi, Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature, Held in the City of Jackson, October, November and December, 1865 (Jackson: J. J. Shannon & Co., State Printers, 1866); digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0001929140 : accessed 23 July 2026), ch. IV, §§ 2–3 ↩
33. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), “An Act respecting Slaves,” § 9 ↩
34. U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for Mississippi, by Sara L. Buchanan, assisted by Mary L. Sullivan and Elizabeth Batson, Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, No. 157-23 (Revised) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1949); PDF, FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-23-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf : accessed 10 August 2026), 3–4, citing Code of 1942, §§ 451–454; and see Revised Code of 1880, § 1167 ↩
35. Laws of Mississippi, 1839, ch. 46, §§ 1–5; Alden and Van Hoesen, Digest (1839), 920–21 ↩
36. Fisher v. Allen, 2 Howard (Miss.) 611 (1837) ↩
37. Mississippi, The Revised Code of the Statute Laws of the State of Mississippi (Jackson, Miss.: E. Barksdale, State Printer, 1857); digital images, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_Code_of_the_Statute_Laws_of/u1qwAAAAMAAJ : accessed 23 July 2026), ch. XL, “An Act Concerning Marriages, Divorces, and the Separate Property of Married Women,” art. 23 ↩
38. Revised Code of 1857, ch. XL, art. 24 ↩
39. Revised Code of 1857, ch. XL, art. 25 ↩
40. Revised Code of 1880, § 1167; carried through the Code of 1892, § 2289, the Code of 1906, § 2517, Hemingway’s Code (1917), § 2051, and the Code of 1930, § 1940, to the Code of 1942, § 451 ↩
41. Revised Code of 1880, § 1177; carried through the Code of 1892, § 2293, the Code of 1906, § 2521, Hemingway’s Code (1917), § 2055, and the Code of 1930, § 1943, to the Code of 1942, § 454 ↩
42. Mississippi Constitution of 1890, § 94 ↩
43. Code of 1942, § 454 ↩
44. Mississippi, The Revised Code of the Laws of Mississippi, in which are Comprised All Such Acts of the General Assembly of a Public Nature as Were in Force at the End of the Year 1823, rev. George Poindexter (Natchez: Printed by F. Baker, 1824); digital images, Internet Archive, Early State Records Project (https://archive.org/details/esrp769261878 : accessed 23 July 2026), ch. on conveyances, § 19; carried from Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), “An act respecting conveyances,” § 3, originally passed 4 March 1803 ↩
45. Revised Code of 1857, ch. XXXVI, “An Act Relating to Real Estate, Alienation, and Partition,” art. 32 ↩
46. Revised Code of 1824, ch. 87, § 1 ↩
47. Revised Code of 1857, ch. LX, art. 162 ↩
48. Revised Code of 1824, conveyances, § 20 ↩
49. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), “An act respecting conveyances,” § 3, proviso ↩
50. Revised Code of 1857, ch. XXXVI, art. 32, final clause ↩
51. Revised Code of 1880, § 1258; carried through the Code of 1892, § 1983, the Code of 1906, § 2159, Hemingway’s Code (1917), § 1834, Laws of 1924, ch. 169, and the Code of 1930, § 1778, to the Code of 1942, § 330, now Miss. Code Ann. § 89-1-29 ↩
52. Code of 1942, §§ 330, 332; Legal Status of Women: Mississippi (1949), 4 ↩
53. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), wills and estates act, §§ 49–50 ↩
54. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), “An Act concerning Witnesses,” §§ 1–4, 11, setting competency rather than any age; and “An act respecting conveyances,” §§ 1–3, under which a deed was proved for record by the oath of a subscribing witness — the practical reason witnesses were adults ↩
55. Revised Code of 1824, “Slaves, Free Negroes and Mulattoes,” § 15, treating anyone with one-quarter or more African ancestry as within the chapter; free people of color are grantors and grantees throughout the antebellum county deed books ↩
56. Revised Code of 1857, ch. XXXIII, arts. 79–81; and see Mississippi Department of Archives and History, “A Contested Presence: Free Blacks in Antebellum Mississippi, 1820–1860,” Mississippi History Now (https://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/a-contested-presence-free-blacks-in-antebellum-mississippi-18201860 : accessed 23 July 2026), which gathers the registration statutes and gives the pages in the 1848 and 1857 codes ↩
57. Laws of the State of Mississippi, Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature, Held in the City of Jackson, October, November and December, 1865 (Jackson: J. J. Shannon & Co., State Printers, 1866); digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0001929140 : accessed 23 July 2026), ch. IV, § 1 ↩
58. Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 8, arts. 6, 8, 12, on the taxation of Indian reservations; and see the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek (1830), art. 14, and the Treaty of Pontotoc Creek (1832) ↩
59. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), wills and estates act, § 27 ↩
60. Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 44, art. 2 (52); carried through the Revised Code of 1857, ch. 60, art. 111, the Revised Code of 1871, § 1951, the Revised Code of 1880, § 1273, the Code of 1892, § 1547, the Code of 1906, § 1653, Hemingway’s Code (1917), § 1385, and the Code of 1930, § 1406, to the Code of 1942, § 472 ↩
61. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), wills and estates act, § 16; carried through Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 44, art. 2 (50), the Revised Code of 1857, ch. 60, art. 110, the Revised Code of 1871, § 1948, the Revised Code of 1880, § 1271, the Code of 1892, § 1543, the Code of 1906, § 1649, Hemingway’s Code (1917), § 1381, and the Code of 1930, § 1402, to the Code of 1942, § 468 ↩
62. Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 44, art. 2 (50); now Miss. Code Ann. § 91-1-5, through the Code of 1942, § 469 ↩
63. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), wills and estates act, § 16 ↩
64. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), wills and estates act, § 27 ↩
65. Revised Code of 1824, ch. 87, “An act, to reduce into one the several acts, and parts of acts, relating to dower,” passed 13 June 1822, § 1 ↩
66. Revised Code of 1824, ch. 87, § 2 ↩
67. Revised Code of 1857, ch. LX, art. 162 ↩
68. Revised Code of 1857, ch. LX, art. 163 ↩
69. Revised Code of 1880, § 1771; carried from Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 44, arts. 3–4, and the Revised Code of 1857, ch. 17, art. 1, through the Revised Code of 1871, § 1788, the Code of 1892, § 1545, the Code of 1906, § 1651, Hemingway’s Code (1917), § 1383, and the Code of 1930, § 1404, to the Code of 1942, § 470 ↩
70. Revised Code of 1880, § 1170; carried through the Code of 1892, § 2291, the Code of 1906, § 2519, Hemingway’s Code (1917), § 2053, and the Code of 1930, § 1942, to the Code of 1942, § 453, now Miss. Code Ann. § 93-3-5 ↩
71. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), wills and estates act, § 17 ↩
72. Revised Code of 1824, ch. 87, §§ 3–4 ↩
73. Revised Code of 1824, ch. 87, § 5 ↩
74. Revised Code of 1857, ch. XL, art. 29 ↩
75. Revised Code of 1857, ch. LX, art. 165 ↩
76. Code of 1942, §§ 552, 561; Legal Status of Women: Mississippi (1949), 7 ↩
77. Code of 1942, § 478; Tiser v. McCain, 113 Miss. 776, 785; 74 So. 660 (1917) ↩
78. Code of 1942, §§ 668–670; Legal Status of Women: Mississippi (1949), 7 ↩
79. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), wills and estates act, §§ 1, 23, 26 ↩
80. Mississippi Constitution of 1890, § 159(c), (d) ↩
81. Revised Code of 1824, Orphans’ Court, §§ 125–126, the guardian giving bond to the judge of probate; the same duties of bond, inventory and annual account carried into the Revised Code of 1857, ch. LX, “An Act providing for the establishment of the Probate Court,” and thence into the guardianship chapter of the Code of 1942, §§ 401–404 ↩
82. Revised Code of 1824, Orphans’ Court, § 125; Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 36, art. 1 (125) ↩
83. Alden and Van Hoesen, Digest (1839), orphans’ court act, § 125, requiring the minor’s petition to be signed and acknowledged before the judge of probate or a justice of the peace and recorded by the register of the orphans’ court ↩
84. Revised Code of 1857, ch. LX, art. 142 ↩
85. Former Miss. Code Ann. § 93-13-13, repealed 2019; the choice of guardian at fourteen descends from Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 36, art. 1 (125), through the Revised Code of 1857, ch. 60, art. 142, the Revised Code of 1871, § 1202, the Revised Code of 1880, § 2097, the Code of 1892, § 2186, the Code of 1906, § 2403, Hemingway’s Code (1917), § 1964, and the Code of 1930, § 1868, to the Code of 1942, § 404 ↩
86. Code of 1942, § 399; Legal Status of Women: Mississippi (1949), 8–9 ↩
87. Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 35, art. 2 (4); carried through the Revised Code of 1857, ch. 60, art. 115, the Revised Code of 1871, § 1955, the Revised Code of 1880, § 1275, the Code of 1892, § 1549, the Code of 1906, § 1655, Hemingway’s Code (1917), § 1387, Laws of 1924, ch. 162, and the Code of 1930, § 1408, to the Code of 1942, § 474 ↩
88. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), wills and estates act, § 18 ↩
89. Laws of the State of Mississippi, Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature, Held in the City of Jackson, October, November and December, 1865 (Jackson: J. J. Shannon & Co., State Printers, 1866); digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0001929140 : accessed 23 July 2026), ch. IV, § 3 ↩
90. Code of 1942, §§ 383–398; Legal Status of Women: Mississippi (1949), 9 ↩
91. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), wills and estates act, § 2; and, at the close of this period, Code of 1942, § 657, per Legal Status of Women: Mississippi (1949), 6; the age was lowered to 18 by Laws of 1970, ch. 324, § 1 ↩
92. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), wills and estates act, § 2 ↩
93. Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 49, art. 1 (14); carried through the Revised Code of 1857, ch. 60, art. 34, the Revised Code of 1871, § 2388, the Revised Code of 1880, § 1262, the Code of 1892, § 4488, the Code of 1906, § 5078, Hemingway’s Code (1917), § 3366, and the Code of 1930, § 3550, to the Code of 1942, § 657 ↩
94. Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 49, art. 1 (14), exempting a will wholly written and subscribed by the testator ↩
95. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), wills and estates act, §§ 3–5; carried through Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 49, art. 1 (18), the Revised Code of 1857, ch. 60, art. 38, the Revised Code of 1871, § 2392, the Revised Code of 1880, § 1266, the Code of 1892, § 4492, the Code of 1906, § 5082, Hemingway’s Code (1917), § 3370, and the Code of 1930, § 3556, to the Code of 1942, § 663; and see Schmitz v. Summers, 179 Miss. 260; 174 So. 569 (1937) ↩
96. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), wills and estates act, § 9; carried through Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 49, art. 1 (27), the Revised Code of 1857, ch. 60, art. 45, the Revised Code of 1871, § 1101, the Revised Code of 1880, § 1973, the Code of 1892, § 1826, the Code of 1906, § 2001, Hemingway’s Code (1917), § 1666, and the Code of 1930, § 3554, to the Code of 1942, § 661; and see Swanzy v. Kolb, 94 Miss. 10; 46 So. 549 (1908) ↩
97. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), wills and estates act, § 38, providing an administrator during the minority of an infant executor; the rule that letters granted to a person under 21 are good, and that the bond such a person gives binds as an adult’s would, enters at Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 49, art. 1 (36), and is carried through the Revised Code of 1857, ch. 60, art. 51, the Revised Code of 1871, § 1107, the Revised Code of 1880, § 1979, the Code of 1892, § 1832, the Code of 1906, § 2007, Hemingway’s Code (1917), § 1672, and the Code of 1930, § 1616, to the Code of 1942, § 512, now Miss. Code Ann. § 91-7-37; the 18-year majority for executors came in by Laws of 1974, ch. 446, after the period covered here ↩
98. The Mississippi statutes name the office without qualification of sex, speaking of an “executor or administrator” throughout: Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), wills and estates act; Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 49; and the administration chapter of every later code. The surviving spouse stood first in the order of preference for letters of administration, a rule now at Miss. Code Ann. § 91-7-63. For the parallel rule on wills, the 1948 report records that every person of 21 or over, male or female, married or unmarried, could dispose of property by will: U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for Mississippi, by Sara L. Buchanan, assisted by Mary L. Sullivan and Elizabeth Batson, Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, No. 157-23 (Revised) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1949); PDF, FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-23-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf : accessed 10 August 2026), 6, citing Code of 1942, § 657 ↩
99. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), “An Act to raise Supplies and make Appropriations for the Year 1807,” § 3 ↩
100. Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 8, the revenue chapter, which compiles the assessment and collection acts in force from 1798 to 1848 and is the place to trace the rate for any single year in that span ↩
101. Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 8, art. 16, § 1, being the act of 4 February 1844 ↩
102. Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 8, art. 16, § 6 ↩
103. Laws of the State of Mississippi, Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature, Held in the City of Jackson, October, November and December, 1865 (Jackson: J. J. Shannon & Co., State Printers, 1866); digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0001929140 : accessed 23 July 2026), ch. VI, “An Act to amend the Vagrant Laws of the State,” §§ 6–7, laying the tax and making non-payment evidence of vagrancy ↩
104. The poll tax survived the war in the revenue chapters of the Revised Code of 1871 and the Revised Code of 1880, which carry no racial classification of taxpayers; those two chapters are the place to check a rate or an age limit for any year between 1866 and 1890. The 21-to-60 span was then fixed by Mississippi Constitution of 1890, § 243 ↩
105. Mississippi Constitution of 1890, § 243 ↩
106. Mississippi Constitution of 1890, §§ 241, 244 ↩
107. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), “An Act concerning Juries,” ch. XI, § 2 ↩
108. The antebellum qualification sits in the jury chapter of each compilation: Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi (1848), ch. 61, art. 1 (138), and the Revised Code of 1857, ch. 61, art. 126. The chain of descent from those chapters through the Revised Code of 1871, § 724, to the Revised Code of 1880, § 1661, is printed in the current code and is set out in Gibson v. Mississippi, 162 U.S. 565, 587–88 (1896); digital images, Justia (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/162/565/ : accessed 5 August 2026) ↩
109. Revised Code of 1871, § 724, ch. 8, art. IX, “Jurors—Grand and Petit,” p. 150 ↩ ↩
110. Revised Code of 1880, § 1661, quoted in full in Gibson v. Mississippi, 162 U.S. 565, 587–88 (1896); digital images, Justia (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/162/565/ : accessed 5 August 2026). The later links in the chain — the Code of 1892, § 2354, the Code of 1906, § 2684, Hemingway’s Code (1917), § 2176, the Code of 1930, § 2029, and the Code of 1942, § 1762 — carry the elector test described below, so the modern wording of the section should not be read back into the years covered here ↩
111. Mississippi Constitution of 1890, § 264, that no person be a grand or petit juror unless a qualified elector and able to read and write, the want of the qualification not to vitiate an indictment or verdict; Code of 1892, § 2358, the jury list to be made from the registration books of voters. Both are set out, and the relation between them settled, in Gibson v. Mississippi, 162 U.S. 565, 587–89 (1896), and Williams v. Mississippi, 170 U.S. 213 (1898). Section 264 was amended by Laws of 1960, ch. 502, ratified 23 November 1960, and Laws of 1962, ch. 308, § 1, then made a resident freeholder of more than one year a competent juror without being an elector; the history is traced in Black v. State, 187 So. 2d 815, 816–17 (Miss. 1966); digital images, Justia (https://law.justia.com/cases/mississippi/supreme-court/1966/43928-0.html : accessed 5 August 2026) ↩
112. Triplett v. State, 169 Miss. 306; 152 So. 881 (1934); and see Joslin v. State, 75 Miss. 838; 23 So. 515 (1898), Beason v. State, 96 Miss. 105; 50 So. 488 (1909), Miles v. State, 99 Miss. 165; 54 So. 946 (1911), and Holmes v. State, 133 Miss. 610; 98 So. 104 (1923) ↩
113. Laws of 1916, ch. 111, amended by Laws of 1922, ch. 195, and carried into Hemingway’s Code (1927), §§ 5697–5721, the Code of 1930, §§ 7247 et seq., and the Code of 1942, §§ 6744–6763; the act was upheld in Bryant v. Brown, 151 Miss. 398; 118 So. 184 (1928). The statutory history is set out in Wheeler v. Shoemake, 213 Miss. 374, 380–85; 57 So. 2d 267 (1952); digital images, Justia (https://law.justia.com/cases/mississippi/supreme-court/1952/38203-0.html : accessed 23 July 2026) ↩
114. Laws of 1940, ch. 300, the second juvenile court act, Code of 1942, §§ 7185–7213, especially §§ 7203–7204; repealed by Laws of 1946, ch. 207, § 27; and see Wheeler v. Shoemake, 213 Miss. 374, 385–88 (1952) ↩
115. Laws of 1946, ch. 207, the Youth Court Act, Code of 1942, §§ 7185-01 through 7185-30, §§ 1–4, 8–9, 15–17; the 1916 laws were finally repealed by this act and by Laws of 1948, ch. 429, § 12; the act was held valid in Wheeler v. Shoemake, 213 Miss. 374; 57 So. 2d 267 (1952) ↩
116. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), “An Act concerning Witnesses,” §§ 1–4, 11 ↩
117. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), “An Act concerning Witnesses,” § 10 ↩
118. Code of 1942, § 1639; Spencer v. O’Bryant, 140 Miss. 474, 478; 106 So. 6 (1925) ↩
119. Mississippi Constitution of 1890, §§ 106, 250; Code of 1942, §§ 3235–3236 ↩
120. Legal Status of Women: Mississippi (1949), 9, citing Code of 1942, § 1762 ↩
121. Laws of 1968, ch. 335, § 1, amending Code of 1942, § 1762; and see Smith v. State, 229 So. 2d 551 (Miss. 1969); digital images, Justia (https://law.justia.com/cases/mississippi/supreme-court/1969/45554-0.html : accessed 23 July 2026) ↩
122. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), “An Act concerning Witnesses,” § 9 ↩
123. Statutes of the Mississippi Territory (1807), “An Act respecting Slaves,” § 1 ↩
124. Revised Code of 1857, ch. XXXIII, art. 62 ↩
125. Laws of the State of Mississippi, Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature, Held in the City of Jackson, October, November and December, 1865 (Jackson: J. J. Shannon & Co., State Printers, 1866); digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0001929140 : accessed 23 July 2026), ch. IV, § 4 ↩
126. Revised Code of 1871, §§ 756–760, ch. 8, art. X, “Witnesses—Who Competent and How Summoned,” pp. 156–57; the volume carries no racial classification of witnesses or jurors ↩

Note: This law guide was created with assistance from multiple AI tools. Though a diligent effort was made to ensure the accuracy of the information provided, there may be unintentional errors. It's important to check the primary sources as needed to ensure accuracy.