Pennsylvania Historical Law Guide

Contents

Legal Ages at a Glance

General Principles

Where Pennsylvania law came from

Pennsylvania's law came from England. William Penn received his charter in 1681, and the first assemblies met in 1682. Swedish and Dutch settlers had held land along the Delaware since 1638, but English rule absorbed their law before Penn arrived, and it leaves nothing you will run into in the records.

After independence the state kept the English system on purpose, by statute. The common law of England, and the English statutes that had been in force in the Province, stayed in force in the new Commonwealth. Only two kinds of law were dropped: those requiring loyalty to the King, and those recognizing the authority of Penn's heirs¹. Under that system a husband and a wife each still owned whatever property was theirs. What the common-law rules below controlled was what each of them could do with it.

What made Pennsylvania different from England

Three differences shape almost every record.

First, land was divided among all the children from the very beginning. The oldest son took a double share until 1794.

Second, a dead person's land could be sold to pay his debts. The 1682 laws made all land and goods available to creditors, and the act of 1700 set out how the sale worked. In England at that date, land was still protected from most creditors².

Third, estates were handled by ordinary civil courts rather than by church courts. Penn's government created an Orphans' Court in 1683. That court was put on a permanent footing in 1712–13, rewritten in 1832, and rewritten again by the seven estates acts of 1917³. Despite its name, it did far more than look after orphans. It appointed and audited guardians, divided the estates of people who left no will, split land among heirs, and ordered the sale of a child's land. Its records hold much of the family evidence described in this guide. Wills were proved and executors approved separately, by the county Register of Wills.

Legal Age of Adulthood

Full age at twenty-one

Full legal age was 21 for women and men alike throughout the period this guide covers. Blackstone, the standard statement of the common law that the state adopted in 1777, puts it plainly: full age in male or female is twenty-one years⁴. The General Assembly never changed it. The age dropped to 18 in 1970⁵, after this period ends.

What a minor could and could not do

A minor could own property of any kind. What the law limited was the power to get rid of it. Under the common law, a person could sell his land and goods at 21, and not before⁴. A contract or deed signed by a minor was voidable. It held up unless the minor canceled it, and only the minor could do that, at 21 or soon after.

That meant a buyer could never get safe title from a child. Instead, a child's land was sold through the Orphans' Court, after a guardian filed a petition. An act of 1853 widened that power, letting the court order the sale, mortgage, or lease of land whose owner could not act for himself. Before 1853 you needed a private act of the General Assembly⁶. So the sale of a child's land leaves behind a petition, a court order, and a guardian's deed, and the file names the family.

Marriage

Who was old enough to marry

The common-law ages governed for most of this period. A boy could marry at 14 and a girl at 12⁴. In practice, what really controlled young marriages was the need for a parent's consent.

In 1927 Pennsylvania set a minimum age for the first time. For licenses issued after 1 October that year, the clerk could not issue one if either applicant was under 16. A judge of the Orphans' Court could direct the clerk to issue a license anyway in a special case⁷. So a marriage under 16 after 1927 should have a judge's authorization in the license file.

A parent's consent

The colonial rule started out as a duty to ask. The laws agreed upon in England in 1682 set three requirements. Parents or guardians should be consulted first. The marriage should be announced beforehand. And the couple married by taking each other as husband and wife in front of reliable witnesses. A certificate signed by the couple and the witnesses went to the county register⁸.

The provincial laws passed between 1682 and 1700 said the same thing in more detail. Parents and guardians were to be consulted if possible. Reliable people from wherever the couple had lived had to certify that neither was already promised to someone else. The couple's intentions were posted on the courthouse or meeting-house door a month before the wedding, and at least twelve witnesses attended. Marrying against these rules cost £10, and joining such a couple cost £20⁹.

The act of 1701 carried the same system forward. It added that a servant who married without the consent of his master or mistress owed a further year of service¹⁰.

From 1729–30 consent was required outright for anyone under 21, male or female. Banns were the public announcement that a couple planned to marry. Nobody could publish banns, and no justice could sign the announcement, if either person was under 21, still living under a parent's care, or an indentured servant. First the parent, guardian, master, or mistress had to provide a certificate of consent. An officiant who married them without it owed £50¹¹.

Under the license system the clerk drew the same line at 21. Consent was given in person, or in writing signed in front of two adult witnesses¹². That consent is filed with the license application, and it names the parent or guardian who gave it.

A marriage needed no minister

Pennsylvania recognized marriage by the couple's own agreement from the start. The colonial acts said a marriage was made by the couple taking each other as husband and wife in front of witnesses, with a certificate returned to the county register⁸⁹. Quakers married themselves in meeting, and the law protected the practice. A couple could always marry without a clergyman.

Out of that grew the rule that outlasted every other Pennsylvania peculiarity. A couple who spoke words agreeing to be married right then were married, with no license, no ceremony, and no document. Where those words could not be proved, living together and being known as husband and wife was enough to raise a presumption that a marriage had happened¹³. Pennsylvania abolished this only for marriages made after 1 January 2005, and the law specifically protected earlier ones¹⁴.

A valid marriage may have left no record at all. The license laws never said that a marriage without a license was invalid, so a marriage that was good at common law stood without one. The penalty fell on the officiant, who owed $100 for performing a marriage without a license¹⁵. The absence of a license proves nothing about the marriage, before 1885 or after.

Licenses and returns

A license became required across the whole state in 1885. The clerk of the Orphans' Court issued it and entered it in a docket¹⁶. County marriage records run without a break from that point, and the docket entry gives each person's name, age, and residence.

Later applications carry more. They give the color, occupation, and birthplace of both people and of their parents, the number of the marriage, and how any earlier one ended¹⁷. Before 1885 the civil record is thin, and church registers and Quaker meeting minutes carry the weight.

Who could not marry whom

A marriage between close relatives was void, and it carried a fine of up to $500 and up to three years in prison. A man could not marry his mother, grandmother, sister, daughter, granddaughter, aunt, or niece, and a woman could not marry the men in the matching relationships to her¹⁸. Once either spouse had died, nobody could raise the invalidity in court.

First cousins were added to that list by an act that became law on 24 June 1901, and it reached only marriages made after 1 January 1902. Before that day a first-cousin marriage in Pennsylvania was perfectly lawful, and the legislature had deliberately left first cousins off the forbidden list when it revised the list in 1860. Even after that day such a marriage was voidable rather than void, so it stood until a court canceled it, and it carried none of the criminal penalty attached to the other forbidden relationships. Pennsylvania also kept on recognizing a first-cousin marriage performed in a state that allowed one¹⁹. So a first-cousin couple who crossed a state line to marry after 1901 were doing something Pennsylvania courts upheld, and the marriage record will be in the other state.

A second marriage was void if the first was still good. There was one way out. A husband or wife who remarried on a well-founded rumor of death, after the other had been gone two full years, escaped the penalty. If the missing spouse came back, he or she had six months to demand the old marriage back or to have the new one canceled²⁰. An officiant who married a couple while either was drunk owed $50 and could be jailed²¹.

By the 1920s the license law added reasons of its own for refusing. In the words of the statute, the clerk was to refuse a license where either party was an imbecile, an epileptic, or a person of unsound mind or under guardianship as such, or was under the influence of liquor or a narcotic when applying. The application had to state that neither person had a disease they could pass on²². A refusal went to the Orphans' Court, where a judge heard it without a jury²³. So a refused application leaves a court file rather than a marriage record.

Enslaved people and people of color

Enslaved people had no legal power to make a civil marriage. In practice an owner's consent decided whether an enslaved couple lived as husband and wife.

Interracial marriage was banned from 1725–26, and the ban was lifted in 1780. The act of 1725–26 fined any minister, pastor, or magistrate £100 for marrying a Black person to a white person. A white person who lived with a Black person while claiming to be married owed £30 or was sold as a servant for up to seven years. The children of the union were bound to service until 31, and a free Black person who married a white person was to be sold into slavery for life²⁴. The Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 repealed that act by name²⁵, and Pennsylvania never again blocked a marriage because of race. By the 1920s the marriage law had no racial restriction in it at all¹⁷.

Property Ownership

Which men could own land

A man could hold land at any age, taking it by inheritance, by will, or as a gift. The age that mattered was 21, when he could sell it, mortgage it, and transfer it himself⁴.

A foreign-born man's position depended on naturalization. Until he was naturalized, his power to hold land and pass it on was limited, so an early foreign-born landholder may have a private act in the session laws.

Land could be bought from Native owners only by the Penn family as Proprietaries, the private owners of the province, and later by the Commonwealth. So where a title runs back to a Native seller, the document that matters is a treaty or a provincial purchase, not a deed between two individuals.

Women and land ownership

Everything depended on marriage. A single woman or a widow was a feme sole, meaning "woman alone." She bought, sold, mortgaged, sued, and left property by will exactly as a man did.

A married woman was a feme covert, meaning "covered woman." The rule was called coverture: in law, a wife had no legal identity separate from her husband's. He managed her land and kept the income from it, her money and belongings became his, and she could not make a contract on her own²⁶.

The feme sole trader

Pennsylvania chipped away at coverture earlier than most states, and each step leaves a record. From 1718 a wife left keeping shop or working at a trade while her husband was away at sea was declared a feme sole trader. She sued and was sued in her own name while he was alive, and judgments came out of her own goods rather than his. If the absent husband gave away land without leaving equivalent provision for his wife and children, that transfer was void²⁷.

From 1855 the same rights went to a wife whose husband had deserted her, or who refused through drunkenness or wastefulness to support her. Her property became hers to sell or leave by will. She petitioned the Court of Common Pleas, and the certificate the court granted was conclusive proof of her authority²⁸. A feme sole trader petition usually says when and why the marriage broke down.

A married woman's separate property

An act of 1848 secured to a married woman the property she brought to the marriage or acquired during it, free of her husband's control and of his debts²⁹. An act of 1893 gave her nearly the same power to make contracts as a single woman, with two limits. She could not stand as surety, which means promising to pay somebody else's debt, and she could not sell or mortgage her own land unless her husband signed too³⁰.

When a wife had to sign her husband's deed

A wife's signature, or the lack of one, tells you both that the man was married and roughly when the deed was drawn up.

The reason is dower. Dower gave a widow the use of one-third of her husband's land for the rest of her life. She did not own that third, she only had the use of it. In Pennsylvania, dower reached any land the husband had held at any time during the marriage. So a buyer needed the wife to sign the deed as well, or he took the land with her claim still attached³¹.

The Intestate Act of 1917 replaced dower with a fixed statutory share, but kept the same trap for buyers. Where a husband had sold land during his life without his wife signing, her share in that land was set at the same size as her share in the land he still owned when he died³². So a deed signed by the husband alone left a claim attached to the land, both before 1917 and after³³.

One exception matters. A sheriff's sale to pay the husband's debt could pass the land free of dower even though the wife never signed³⁴. So a widow's absence from a court-ordered sale is not evidence that she was dead.

The private examination of a wife

Her signature alone was not enough. From 1770 a husband and wife selling the wife's land signed the deed and then appeared before a judge of the supreme court or a justice of the county court of common pleas to acknowledge it, meaning to confirm in front of that officer that they had signed it willingly. That officer had to question the wife by herself, away from her husband. He read the deed to her and satisfied himself that she had signed and handed it over willingly and of her own free will, with no pressure from her husband³⁵.

The act said this had been the custom since the province was settled. It confirmed the deeds already handled that way, and it let deeds made outside the province be acknowledged before a mayor or chief magistrate and certified under the town seal³⁶. That certificate is worth finding. It proves the marriage, names the wife, and shows she was alive on the day it was taken.

The act of 1848 briefly required a married woman to acknowledge a deed of her own land differently from the way she acknowledged joining her husband's. An act of 1856 removed the difference, so one form covered both. It also made deeds she had already acknowledged jointly with her husband good as to her own land³⁷.

The separate questioning ended in 1901. From that year a married woman's acknowledgment was taken the same way as if she were single, and it counted just as much as one taken apart from her husband³⁸. She still had to sign her husband's deed to give up dower, but on a deed from 1901 onward there is no separate certificate to look for.

Which children could own land

A child owned land at any age, by inheritance, by will, or as a gift. Selling it was the problem, and Pennsylvania handled that through the Orphans' Court. The court ordered the sale and a guardian signed the deed⁶. Own at any age; sell at 21.

Witnessing and recording a deed

A witness of any age could serve, as long as the person understood an oath and could describe what he or she had seen. Understanding, not age, was the test³⁹. In practice witnesses were adults, often relatives or neighbors of the person making the deed, since a witness might be called years later to prove it.

Recording came in with the province. The 1682 laws required charters, gifts, grants, and land transfers to be entered in a public office within two months, or they were void. Under an act of 1715 that still anchors the Pennsylvania recording system, a transfer was made good against everyone by acknowledging and recording it⁴⁰.

Enslaved people and free people of color

Enslaved people could not own real estate. In law, anything in their possession belonged to the owner.

Free people of color could own land, and did. Pennsylvania law left them free to buy it, hold it, and leave it by will, and after 1780 the state had one of the largest free Black populations in the North. Deeds, mortgages, and estate files for free Black families exist, and they are worth searching on the same terms as anyone else's.

The abolition act of 1780 worked by dates rather than by one single moment of freedom, and those dates control which records exist. Every enslaved person had to be registered with the clerk of the peace of the county, or with the clerk of the city court in Philadelphia, on or before 1 November 1780. The entry gave the person's name, age, and sex, and the owner's name and occupation. Anyone not registered was free⁴¹.

The first children covered by that last rule reached 28 in 1808.

These rules created their own records. They include county slave registers, returns of servant children born after the act, and manumissions, which were the owner's formal grants of freedom, entered with the recorder of deeds. The registers name enslaved people one by one, which few other sources of the period do.

Inheritance

How an estate was divided when there was no will

Someone who died without a will died intestate. Pennsylvania divided land among all the children from the very beginning, and gave the widow the use of a share rather than ownership of it until the twentieth century. The shares changed four times.

The Intestate Act of 1947 replaced the act of 1917 for deaths on or after 1 January 1948. It restated the system rather than rebuilding it, but it changed a number of the shares. For a death in 1948, 1949, or 1950, read the act of 1947 and not the act of 1917. An article written at the time in the Dickinson Law Review lists each change next to the matching section of the old act⁵⁰.

A widower's position before 1917 was different again. If his wife left no children, he held all her land for life as tenant by the curtesy and took all her money and goods. If children survived, he split the money and goods with them and took a child's share⁵¹.

Three points follow when you are reconstructing a family. Before 1794 the oldest son's double share can make an estate division look unfair when it is actually normal. From 1794 the children took equally, sons and daughters alike. And until 1917 the widow held her share of the land only for life, so the title sat with the children while she was alive. That is why a widow so often appears using land she does not own.

What a widow received

Dower was the right to use one-third of the husband's land for life. Curtesy was the male version, the widower's right to use his wife's land for life. The Intestate Act of 1917 put the statutory shares above in place of both. The widow's share was declared to replace and fully satisfy her dower in land her husband held at death, and the widower's share replaced his curtesy in the same way⁵². From that point husband and wife took alike.

Dower still governs a death before 1917. The claim against land sold without the wife's signature survived the change, so the term keeps its force in the deed books long afterward.

Separately, from 1851 the widow or the children of anyone who died could keep up to $300 worth of the estate, in land or in goods, whether or not there was a will. The executor or administrator had the property appraised⁵³. That appraisement is a separate paper in the estate file.

A surviving husband or wife who disliked the will could elect to take against it, meaning refuse it and take the intestate share instead⁵⁴. The election is written down in the estate file, and it tells you which one the survivor chose.

Guardians and the age of fourteen

A minor's inheritance went to a guardian supervised by the Orphans' Court. The guardian posted a bond, filed accounts, and made a final settlement when the minor turned 21. That final account is one of the most valuable documents in Pennsylvania genealogy. It dates the child's coming of age, which gives you an approximate birth year, and it often reveals a girl's married surname.

A guardian was appointed where a minor inherited or was given property, where a minor was part of a division or distribution, or where no parent could act. A parent could instead name a guardian by will. The father's choice came first, and the mother's counted where the father was dead and had named nobody. A parent who had neglected or deserted the child for a year lost the power completely⁵⁵.

At 14 the child acted for himself or herself. In any Orphans' Court proceeding involving a minor with no guardian, notice went to the minor in person if he or she was over 14, and to the adult next of kin if under. If the minor did not ask for a guardian at the next session, the court appointed one⁵⁶.

A minor of 14 or over chose the guardian, subject to the court's approval. A child who turned 14 after somebody else had already petitioned on his behalf could come in later and choose for himself⁵⁷. That was the common-law rule as well⁴. So a guardianship in which the child does the choosing is evidence that the child had reached 14, which brackets a birth year. Guardianship ended at 21.

Children born outside marriage

At common law a child born outside marriage inherited from nobody. Pennsylvania opened inheritance on the mother's side and left the father's side closed. The child, the mother, and the mother's parents inherited from one another exactly as if the child had been born inside a marriage, and so did their heirs and nearest relatives. The child counted as brother or sister to every other child of its mother. The statute said specifically that it did not change the law about the father⁵⁸.

From 1857 a child became legitimate if the parents married afterward and lived together⁵⁹. The Intestate Act of 1917 dropped the living-together requirement, so the marriage alone was enough for every purpose of inheritance⁶⁰. When an inheritance runs to a child born before the parents' marriage, the marriage is the record to find.

Making a will

From 1833 the age to make a will was 21, for land and for money and goods alike, and for married and single people alike⁶¹. The Wills Act of 1833 said so in a separate section about minors, which the act of 1917 folded into its first section⁶².

Before 1833 the common-law ages governed, because the colonial wills legislation dealt with proof and probate and left the age alone. A boy of 14 and a girl of 12 could make a will of money and goods, and a will of land needed 21⁶³.

A Pennsylvania will was valid without a witness signing it. It had to be in writing and signed at the end by the testator, the person making it, or by somebody else in his presence and at his express direction. It then had to be proved by the oaths or affirmations of two or more competent witnesses⁶⁴. Those witnesses proved the signature at probate. They did not have to have signed the document, and plenty of perfectly valid Pennsylvania wills carry no attestation clause at all. There was no minimum age for such a witness; understanding was the test³⁹.

Two exceptions sit alongside. Money and goods could pass by a nuncupative will, meaning one spoken rather than written. It had to be made during the last illness at home and proved by two witnesses who were there, with stricter rules above $100⁶⁵. And a gift for religious or charitable purposes was void unless two credible witnesses who stood to gain nothing from that gift had witnessed the will at least thirty days before the testator died⁶⁶. Here, uniquely, a witness with something to gain destroyed the gift.

An executor had to be of full age, 21. That was stricter than the English common law, which allowed a person to serve at 17⁴. Where a Pennsylvania will named somebody under 21, the Register granted letters, meaning the court's written authority to act, to another person until the minor came of age⁶⁷. So an unexpected administrator early in an estate often means the named executor was still a minor. Women served as executrix on the same terms as men, and a widow named in her husband's will is one of the most common personal representatives in the Pennsylvania records.

Taxation

What was taxed

Two taxes on individuals leave usable records. The first is the county rate and levy, charged on the value of a man's property. The second is the poll or head tax, charged on single freemen who had little or no property.

A poll tax is a flat charge on a person rather than on property. It is the prize for genealogy, because it puts propertyless young men on a list by name. Pennsylvania took no full state population count, so the eighteenth-century assessment lists and the septennial returns, which were counts of taxable inhabitants made every seven years, stand in for one.

Who was taxable and at what age

Two different things could put a man on a tax list, and it helps to keep them apart.

Property was taxed no matter who owned it. If you owned land, buildings, livestock, a mill, or a trade, the assessors valued it and charged you, married or single. Age was not the entry point here; owning something taxable was.

The head tax was different. It fell on men who had little or no property, and there age did matter. Under the assessment law of 1724–25 the assessors charged everyone liable. They were told to have due regard to people who were poor or had a houseful of children, and to leave unimproved land out. Two rules fixed the ages. No single man was charged who was under 21 at the time of assessment, or who had not been free of his indenture or apprenticeship for six months. And a single man whose property was worth less than £50 was charged three shillings a head, the poll tax proper, on a general tax of a penny in the pound⁶⁸.

So "freeman" on these lists does not mean a free man in the ordinary sense of the word. It means a man who was not serving under an indenture or apprenticeship. A man who finished his term at 23 still did not show up as a single freeman until six months later, so the two rules worked together rather than as alternatives.

The practical effect for research is that a man's first appearance as a single freeman brackets his twenty-first birthday, or his release from an indenture. His move from a head charge to an assessment on property marks the point at which he acquired something, often on marriage or on a parent's death.

Taxes after independence

Independence left the two age tests alone. The war tax of 1777 charged every single freeman who was 21, or six months out of his apprenticeship or indenture, whether he lived with his parents or somewhere else. The charge rose from the colonial three shillings to ten. One new exemption was added, for men actually enlisted as soldiers in the service of the state or of the United States⁶⁹. A man who vanishes from a list during the war years may have enlisted rather than died or moved away.

A new county rates act in 1799 rebuilt the list of what was taxed. Assessors valued land, houses, livestock, enslaved people, mills, furnaces, and ferries. Single free men of 21 and over who had no trade and no property were taxed as well, and the county commissioners could excuse the very poor⁷⁰.

The act of 15 April 1834 became the long-running framework for county and township rates and levies, and it was still being amended in the twentieth century⁷¹. Under it a full assessment was made every three years, and the taxes of the two years in between rested on that last figure. The three-year years ran 1802, 1805, 1808, 1811, 1814, and so on into the twentieth century. The colonial words "freeman" and "inmate" stayed in use for decades before giving way to a simple split between owners and tenants. An inmate on these lists is a married man who owned no land, and the word has nothing to do with prisons, and the lists record each man's occupation⁷². A change of assessment in an in-between year may not show up until the next three-year list, so do not read a three-year gap as inactivity.

One rule pushed almost every adult man onto a tax list, and it is easy to miss. Each of the state constitutions of 1790, 1838, and 1874 made paying a state or county tax a qualification for voting. The man had to have paid within two years, and the tax had to have been assessed a set period before the election. Sons of qualified voters between the ages of 21 and 22 could vote without having paid⁷³. So a man who wanted to vote needed to be assessed, and the assessment lists are correspondingly full.

The system was consolidated for the twentieth century by the General County Assessment Law of 1933, which carried forward the county occupation tax and the per capita or head tax⁷⁴. Those taxes survive well past 1950.

Exemptions and who else appears

County rates were capped, the Proprietary's own estate was exempt, and the assessors had a standing instruction to have regard to the poor and to men with many children⁶⁸. When a man drops off a list while he is still alive elsewhere in the record, poverty, ill health, or a move to another township is usually the reason.

Liability ran for life. No age released a man from it. He stayed on the list as long as he had anything to be charged on, and relief came from the assessors' judgment rather than from a birthday.

Enslaved people were taxed as their owner's property, so they appear on the assessment lists as values rather than as names⁷⁰. The septennial returns, by contrast, sometimes name them. Free Black men were charged on the same terms as anyone else.

Courts

Jury service

Jurors were adult men of 21. The age came in through the common law of full age⁴ and through the qualifications, rather than from any statute that named it. A juror had to be a taxable citizen, and after 1867 a qualified voter, and both of those started at 21.

Pennsylvania set the rule at the founding. Under the laws agreed upon in England in 1682, every trial was by twelve men, as nearly as possible peers or equals from the neighborhood, men against whom nothing could fairly be said, returned by the sheriff. In capital cases the sheriff first returned twenty-four men for a grand inquest, the body that decided whether to bring charges⁷⁵. That stood until 1805.

From 1805 the sheriff and the county commissioners met at the county seat at least thirty days before the first Court of Common Pleas each year. From the list of taxable citizens they picked enough sober and sensible people to serve as jurors that year. Each name went on a folded slip into one of two wheels, which were the drums jurors were drawn from. One wheel held grand jurors, who decided whether to bring charges. The other held petit jurors, who decided the case⁷⁶.

For two years the job passed to the township assessors. From 1807 they returned to the county commissioners the names of all the white male taxable citizens who were liable to serve as jurors and who had enough ability, understanding, and knowledge of English. An act of 1809 repealed that arrangement and revived the act of 1805, this time for good⁷⁶. So a name drawn from a wheel between 1807 and 1809 came off an assessor's return.

An act of 1867 created elected jury commissioners. Those commissioners and the president judge together picked the year's jurors from all the qualified voters of the county, choosing people the act described as sober, intelligent, and sensible⁷⁷. Philadelphia was exempted and kept its own system⁷⁸.

Through all of it the test was neighborhood and good standing, then tax payment, then the vote. Land ownership never entered any of them, either for the regular panel or for the bystanders called in to fill out a jury that came up short. The tax requirement was how poor men were kept off panels, and the voter requirement carried into jury service every restriction that applied to voting.

Women and people of color on juries

Women became eligible in 1921. The Supreme Court held that because the act of 1867 drew jurors from all the qualified voters, and the Nineteenth Amendment had made women voters, women were eligible without any new statute. An indictment found by a grand jury that included a woman therefore stood⁷⁹.

Black men's eligibility followed the vote. The Constitution of 1838 limited voting to the white freeman, which kept Black men off the voter rolls and so off juries. The Fifteenth Amendment and the Constitution of 1874 removed the word, and eligibility followed⁷³.

The age at which a child could be convicted

The common law governed, and the statutes left it alone. A child under 7 could not commit a crime in law at all. Between 7 and 14 the law assumed a child could not, and the Commonwealth could overcome that assumption by showing the child knew right from wrong. At 14 and over a child carried full responsibility and was tried and punished as an adult⁸⁰.

Pennsylvania was among the first states to build a separate court for children. A juvenile court act of 1901 was struck down for denying the jury trial the state constitution guaranteed⁸¹. An act of 1903 replaced it⁸². The Supreme Court upheld the new act, reasoning that a child before the juvenile court was not being tried for anything, but taken into the state's care⁸³.

The line at 16 had one opening in it. The courts of quarter sessions and oyer and terminer, the county courts that tried lesser and more serious crimes, kept the power to try a child over 14 where the welfare of the public required it. The lighter cases went down to the juvenile court⁸³. The Juvenile Court Law of 1933 carried the system forward through 1950⁸². So from 1903 a child under 16 usually leaves a juvenile court file rather than a criminal file, and those files are normally closed.

Witnesses

A witness of any age could testify, as long as he or she understood what an oath meant and could describe what happened. Being allowed to testify was the rule and being barred the exception, and the burden fell on the party who claimed a witness should be barred. The judge questioned a child before allowing the testimony. Whether a very young child's word by itself was enough was a question of how much weight it carried, not of whether the child could be heard at all³⁹. The same test governed witnesses to deeds and to wills.

Women could testify throughout. What reached a married woman was the rule about spouses. The competency act of 1887 barred a husband and wife from testifying against each other, with exceptions that grew over time, including desertion and support proceedings, charges of violence between them, and divorce⁸⁴.

People of color could testify, with one exception that ended in 1780. The act of 1725–26 had set up a separate criminal process for Black defendants, who were tried by justices without a jury. The abolition act of 1780 swept it away. It directed that the offences of Black people, free and enslaved alike, be investigated, judged, and punished in the same way as those of other inhabitants, and not otherwise. The one exception left standing was that an enslaved person could not testify against a freeman⁸⁵. That exception disappeared with slavery itself.

Sources and Where to Verify

Constitutions

• Pennsylvania. Constitution of 1790, art. III, § 1. Sets the tax-paying qualification for voters and exempts sons aged 21 to 22. Pennsylvania Constitution Project. https://www.paconstitution.org/texts-of-the-constitution/1790-2/ (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Pennsylvania. Constitution of 1838, art. III, § 1. Confines the franchise to the "white freeman" and carries the tax-paying qualification forward. This governed jury eligibility. Pennsylvania Constitution Project. https://www.paconstitution.org/texts-of-the-constitution/1838-2/ (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Pennsylvania. Constitution of 1874, art. VIII, § 1. The word "white" is gone; the tax-paying qualification remains. Pennsylvania Constitution Project. https://www.paconstitution.org/texts-of-the-constitution/1874-2/ (accessed 11 August 2026).

Codes and Compilations

• Blackstone, William. Commentaries on the Laws of England. 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765–69. The standard statement of the common law Pennsylvania received in 1777, and the source for the common-law ages used throughout this guide. Book 1, chapter 15 covers husband and wife; book 1, chapter 17 covers guardian and minor and sets out the ages of discretion; book 4, chapter 2 covers the criminal responsibility of children. Transcription. The Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk1ch17.asp (accessed 11 August 2026).
• The Acts of 1917 of the State of Pennsylvania: Intestate Act, Wills Act, Fiduciaries Act, Orphans' Court Partition Act, Revised Price Act, Register of Wills Act, Orphans' Court Act. Pittsburgh: Colonial Trust Company, 1917. Known as the "Seven Sisters," printed with the Commissioners' explanatory report. This is the single most important volume for estates after 1917. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/actsof1917ofstat00penn (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Digest of Pennsylvania Statute Law 1920 (Complete): Based on Pepper and Lewis' Digest of Laws of Pennsylvania, Containing All the General Statutes of the Commonwealth down to 1920, with Notes Showing Sources and Derivation of Statutes and a Chronological Table of Acts, 1683 to 1920. St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1921; with the 1924 supplement. Holds the marriage and license provisions in force in the 1920s, and is the source of the section numbers used in the marriage citations below. Page images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000020600563 (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Pennsylvania. The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801. Volumes 2–16 compiled by James T. Mitchell and Henry Flanders under the act of 19 May 1887; volumes 17–18 by James T. Mitchell, J. Willis Martin, and Hampton L. Carson under the act of 25 July 1913. 18 vols. Volume 1, for the laws before 1700, was never published. The essential source for everything between 1700 and 1801. The printer and date change across the set, so each volume is cited with its own imprint below. Digital images. Internet Archive. Vol. 2, 1700–1712 (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, 1896), https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge06unkngoog; vol. 3, 1712–1724 (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, 1896), https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge00martgoog; vol. 4, 1724–1744 (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, 1897), https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge01martgoog; vol. 7, 1765–1770 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1900), https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge01carsgoog; vol. 9, 1776–1779 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1903), https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge11unkngoog; vol. 10, 1779–1781 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1904), https://archive.org/details/statutesatlargeo10penn; vol. 15, 1794–1797 (Harrisburg: C. E. Aughinbaugh, 1911), https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge00goog; vol. 17, 1802–1805 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1915), https://archive.org/details/statutesatlargeo_17penn; vol. 18, 1806–1809 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1915), https://archive.org/details/statutesatlargeo_a18penn (all accessed 11 August 2026).
• Purdon, John, comp. A Digest of the Laws of Pennsylvania, from the Year One Thousand Seven Hundred to the Tenth Day of July, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventy-two. 10th ed., revised with notes to the judicial decisions by Frederick C. Brightly. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Kay & Brother, 1873. Commonly called Purdon's Digest. This is the working compilation for the middle of the period, with the judicial notes printed under each title. Every rule cited to it here comes from volume 2, which runs from "Laborers" to the end of the alphabet and carries the titles on liquors, marriage, orphans' court, and wills. Digital images of vol. 2. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/adigestlawspenn00coodgoog (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Remick, Raymond M. The Statutory Law of Decedents' Estates in Pennsylvania, with Annotations and Forms. Philadelphia: Geo. T. Bisel Co., 1922. Prints each 1917 section with a note tracing it to the act it replaced. This is the fastest way to run a rule backward from 1917 to 1833 and beyond. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/statutorylawofde00remiiala (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Pennsylvania. Consolidated Statutes and Statutes. Title 1 (statutory construction), Title 20 (decedents, estates, and fiduciaries), Title 23 (domestic relations), Title 42 ch. 45 (jury qualifications), and Title 21 § 82 (acknowledgment by a married woman). Each section is printed with its chain of earlier citations, which is how a modern section is traced back to the act that created it. Pennsylvania General Assembly. https://www.palegis.us/statutes/consolidated (accessed 11 August 2026).

Session Laws

• Pennsylvania. Charter to William Penn, and Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania, Passed between the Years 1682 and 1700, Preceded by Duke of York's Laws in Force from the Year 1676 to the Year 1682. Harrisburg: Lane S. Hart, State Printer, 1879. The laws before 1700, which the Statutes at Large begins after. Contains the laws agreed upon in England in 1682 and the provincial laws on marriage, intestate estates, guardians, and the recording of deeds. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/chartertowillia01commgoog (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Pennsylvania. Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1851. Harrisburg: Theo. Fenn & Co., Printers to the State, 1851. Contains the Act of 14 April 1851, No. 331, whose § 5 creates the $300 widow's and children's exemption. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/lawsofgeneralas_1851penn (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Pennsylvania. Laws of the General Assembly of the State of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1856. Harrisburg: A. Boyd Hamilton, State Printer, 1856. Contains the Act of 11 April 1856, No. 334, at p. 315, on the rights of property of husband and wife. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/lawsofgeneralas_1856penn (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Pennsylvania. Laws of the General Assembly of the State of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1867. Harrisburg: Singerly & Myers, State Printers, 1867. Contains Act No. 41, at pp. 62–64, creating elected jury commissioners and drawing jurors from the qualified electors at large. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/lawsofgeneralas_1867penn (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau. Session Laws Preservation Project. Digitized pamphlet laws and Smith's Laws, arranged by year, covering the acts cited here that are not in the Internet Archive volumes above: 1795 (assessing and collecting county rates and levies), 1799 (raising and collecting county rates and levies), 1832 (orphans' courts), 1833 (wills, P. L. 249, and intestates, P. L. 315), 1848 (married women's property, P. L. 536), 1853 (sales of land held under disability, P. L. 503), 1854 (marriage of an intoxicated person), 1855 (deserted wives as feme sole traders, P. L. 430), 1857 (legitimation by the parents' marriage), 1885 (marriage licenses, P. L. 146), 1887 (competency of witnesses, P. L. 158), 1893 (married women's contracts, P. L. 344), 1901 (first cousins barred from marriage, P. L. 597; acknowledgments by married women, No. 35; and juvenile courts, P. L. 279), 1903 (juvenile courts, P. L. 274), 1911 (charitable gifts, P. L. 702), 1917 (the seven estates acts and the amending act of 11 July, P. L. 755), 1927 (minimum marriageable age, No. 44), 1933 (the General County Assessment Law, P. L. 853, No. 155, and the Juvenile Court Law, P. L. 1433), 1947 (the Intestate Act, No. 37, P. L. 80), 1953 (The Marriage Law, P. L. 1344), and 1970 (majority reduced to 18, No. 230). Digital images. https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws-by-Year (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Pennsylvania. Act of 15 April 1834, P. L. 509, No. 232, "An act relating to county rates and levies and township rates and levies." The framework for county and township taxation for the rest of the period, still being amended in the twentieth century. Pennsylvania General Assembly. https://www.palegis.us/statutes/unconsolidated/law-information?sessYr=1834&sessInd=0&actNum=0232. (accessed 11 August 2026).

Court Cases

• Bridgeford v. Groh. 306 Pa. 566 (1932). A widow's claim against land the husband sold without her joining in the deed. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4093516/bridgeford-v-groh-et-ux/ (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Commonwealth v. Fisher. 213 Pa. 48 (1905). Upholds the juvenile court act of 1903.
• Commonwealth v. Maxwell. 271 Pa. 378 (1921). Holds that women became eligible for jury service through the Nineteenth Amendment without a new statute.
• Mansfield's Case. 22 Pa. Super. 224 (1903). Strikes down the juvenile court act of 1901.
• McClain v. McClain. 40 Pa. Super. 248 (1909). Holds a marriage between first cousins voidable rather than void, so that it stands until a court dissolves it.
• PNC Bank Corp. v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board (Stamos). 831 A.2d 1269 (Pa. Commw. Ct. 2003). The judicial abolition of common-law marriage, prospective only.
• Rosche v. McCoy. 397 Pa. 615, 156 A.2d 307 (1959). States the Pennsylvania rule on the competency of witnesses, including children, under the act of 1887.
• Schofield v. Schofield (No. 1). 51 Pa. Super. 564 (1912). Treats a first-cousin marriage contracted in a state that permits it as valid in Pennsylvania.
• Scott v. Crosdale. 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 127 (Pa. 1791). A widow's dower against a purchaser at a sheriff's sale. Justia. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/2/127/ (accessed 11 August 2026).

Secondary and Reference Works

• Chester County Archives. "18th Century Tax Records," "19th Century Tax Records," and "Negro Servant Returns, 1788–1821." What the assessment lists and the servant returns contain, and where they are filed. https://www.chesco.org/1729/18th-Century-Tax-Records; https://www.chesco.org/1730/19th-Century-Tax-Records; https://www.chesco.org/1724/Negro-Servant-Returns-1788-1821 (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Chester County Archives. "Guide to Marriage Records." Dates the license system to its effective day and lists what a license records in each period. https://www.chesco.org/1174/Marriage-Records (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Chester County Archives. "Hannah H. T. Elliott: Chester County Feme Sole Trader." A worked example of a feme sole trader petition and where such petitions are filed. https://www.chesco.org/1879/Chester-County-Feme-Sole-Trader (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Evans, Robert W., Jr. "Substantial Changes in the Intestate Law Effective January 1, 1948." 52 Dickinson Law Review 39 (1947). Sets each section of the Intestate Act of 1947 against the section of the 1917 act it replaced. https://insight.dickinsonlaw.psu.edu/dlra/vol52/iss1/3 (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Haskins, George L. "The Defeasibility of Dower." 98 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 826 (1950). On how a husband's debts could defeat dower, with Pennsylvania authorities. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8253&context=penn_law_review (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Hutton, A. J. White. "The Intestate Law of Pennsylvania." 39 Dickinson Law Review 135 (1935). A period account of the intestate system from provincial times; indexed in the repository under the misprinted title "The Interstate Law of Pennsylvania." https://insight.dickinsonlaw.psu.edu/dlra/vol39/iss3/1 (accessed 11 August 2026).
• May, Geoffrey. Marriage Laws and Decisions in the United States: A Manual. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1929. States Pennsylvania's marriage law as a clerk would have applied it in the late 1920s, keyed to the Digest of Pennsylvania Statute Law (1920) and its 1924 supplement, and collects the common-law marriage decisions in one place. The Pennsylvania section runs from p. 358, and the chart of forbidden degrees for all states is at p. 477. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/marriagelawsdeci00mayg (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. "Census Records." The septennial returns of taxable inhabitants, 1779–1863, and how they substitute for a state census. https://www.pa.gov/agencies/phmc/pa-state-archives/research-online/research-guides/census-records (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Pennsylvania. Joint State Government Commission. Proposed Marriage and Divorce Codes for Pennsylvania. Harrisburg: Joint State Government Commission, June 1961. A legislative review of Pennsylvania marriage law as it then stood, with a schedule of every earlier act it would repeal. The schedule gives each act its exact date, pamphlet-law page, and full title, which makes this the quickest way to identify a nineteenth- or early twentieth-century marriage statute. https://jsg.legis.state.pa.us/resources/documents/ftp/publications/1961-06-01%201961%20proposed%20marriage%20and%20divorce%20codes%20for%20pa.pdf (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Russell, Judy G. "Another kind of inmate." The Legal Genealogist. Why "inmate" on a Pennsylvania tax list means a landless married man. https://www.legalgenealogist.com/2014/08/22/another-kind-of-inmate/ (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Soltow, Lee, and Kenneth W. Keller. "Rural Pennsylvania in 1800: A Portrait from the Septennial Census." Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 49, no. 1 (January 1982): 25–47. Explains what the county tax acts of 1795 and 1799 required assessors to record, and what "inmate," "freeman," and "single man" mean on a Pennsylvania tax list. https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/view/24289 (accessed 11 August 2026).
• United States Women's Bureau. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Pennsylvania. Bulletin 157-37. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1938. A digest of majority, minors' contracts, married women's property, wills, intestacy, guardianship, marriage, and jury service, with citations to the then-current code. FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/legal-status-women-united-states-america-5430 (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Wiley, Neal G. "A Brief History of the Pennsylvania Orphans' Court." Pennsylvania Bar Association Quarterly (July 2019). Traces the court from 1683 through 1713, 1832, 1874, and 1917, with the statutory citation for each step. https://delcopa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-11/history_PA_orphans_court.pdf (accessed 11 August 2026).

Citations

1. "An Act to Revive and Put in Force Such and So Much of the Late Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania as Is Judged Necessary to Be in Force in This Commonwealth and to Revive and Establish the Courts of Justice and for Other Purposes Therein Mentioned," Act of 28 January 1777, ch. 737, § I, in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 9, 1776 to 1779 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1903), 29–30; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge11unkngoog : accessed 11 August 2026). The laws binding on 14 May 1776, together with the common law and such English statutes as had been in force in the province, were continued from 10 February 1777. Also cited as 1 Sm.L. 429; the rule is now stated at 1 Pa.C.S. § 1503 ↩
2. "Laws Agreed Upon in England," 5 May 1682, art. Fourteen ("that all lands and goods shall be liable to pay debts, except where there is legal issue, and then all the goods, and one third of the land only"), in Charter to William Penn, and Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania, Passed between the Years 1682 and 1700, Preceded by Duke of York's Laws in Force from the Year 1676 to the Year 1682 (Harrisburg: Lane S. Hart, State Printer, 1879), 100; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/chartertowillia01commgoog : accessed 11 August 2026). Carried into statute by the Act of 27 November 1700, ch. 31, § I, in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 2, 1700 to 1712 (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, 1896); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge06unkngoog : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
3. "An Act for Establishing Orphans' Courts," Act of 27 March 1712–13, ch. 197, in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 3, 1712 to 1724 (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, 1896); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge00martgoog : accessed 11 August 2026). The 1683 origin and the later chain are traced in Neal G. Wiley, "A Brief History of the Pennsylvania Orphans' Court," Pennsylvania Bar Association Quarterly (July 2019) (https://delcopa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-11/history_PA_orphans_court.pdf : accessed 11 August 2026); the court was recodified by the Act of 29 March 1832, P. L. 190, and again by the estates acts of 7 June 1917 ↩
4. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765–69), 1:451, book 1, chapter 17; transcription, The Avalon Project, Yale Law School (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk1ch17.asp : accessed 11 August 2026). A male at fourteen "is at years of discretion, and therefore may consent or disagree to marriage, may choose his guardian, and, if his discretion be actually proved, may make his testament of his personal estate; at seventeen may be an executor; and at twenty one is at his own disposal, and may aliene his lands, goods, and chattels." A female may consent to marriage and bequeath her personal estate at twelve, choose a guardian at fourteen, and be executrix at seventeen. "So that full age in male or female, is twenty one years." These are the rules Pennsylvania received in 1777 (citation 1) and did not change until the statutes noted below ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
5. Act of 25 November 1970, No. 230, in Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Session of 1970; digital images, Session Laws Preservation Project, Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws-by-Year : accessed 11 August 2026). The rule is now at 23 Pa.C.S. § 5101, which provides that an individual 18 years of age and older may contract and "shall be deemed an adult" for suing and being sued; Pennsylvania General Assembly (https://www.palegis.us/statutes/consolidated/view-statute?iFrame=true&txtType=HTM&ttl=23&div=0&chpt=51&sctn=1&subsctn=0 : accessed 11 August 2026). The definition of "adult" at 1 Pa.C.S. § 1991, which still reads twenty-one, governs the construction of other statutes and is not the age of majority ↩
6. Act of 18 April 1853, P. L. 503, § 1, in Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1853, 503; digital images, Session Laws Preservation Project, Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws-by-Year : accessed 11 August 2026); re-enacted as the Revised Price Act of 7 June 1917, P. L. 388, in The Acts of 1917 of the State of Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh: Colonial Trust Company, 1917); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsof1917ofstat00penn : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩ ↩
7. "An Act Establishing the Minimum Marriageable Age at Sixteen Years and Providing for Certain Exceptions Thereto," No. 44, approved 24 March 1927, in Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1927 (Harrisburg: By Authority, 1927), 64; digital images, Session Laws Preservation Project, Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws-by-Year : accessed 11 August 2026). The single section bars a license after 1 October 1927 where either applicant is under sixteen, with discretion in a judge of the orphans' court to authorize the clerk to issue one in a special case. Summarized under the heading "Minimum Age," and cited as "L. 1927, No. 44," in Geoffrey May, Marriage Laws and Decisions in the United States: A Manual (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1929), 360; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/marriagelawsdeci00mayg : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
8. "Laws Agreed Upon in England," 5 May 1682, art. Nineteen, in Charter to William Penn, and Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg: Lane S. Hart, State Printer, 1879), 101; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/chartertowillia01commgoog : accessed 11 August 2026): all marriages not forbidden by nearness of blood or affinity shall be encouraged, "but the parents or guardians shall be first consulted, and the marriage shall be published before it be solemnized, and it shall be solemnized by taking one another as husband and wife, before credible witnesses," with a certificate signed by the parties and witnesses returned to the county register. Article Twenty-two directs that there be a register for births, marriages, burials, wills, and letters of administration ↩ ↩
9. "Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania, 1682–1700," ch. CXXXIII, in Charter to William Penn, and Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg: Lane S. Hart, State Printer, 1879), 151; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/chartertowillia01commgoog : accessed 11 August 2026). The chapter is headed against "Clandestine, Loose, and unseemly proceedings . . . about marriage." It requires that parents and guardians be consulted if possible, that the parties' freedom from other engagements be certified by credible persons where they have lived, that their intentions be affixed on the court or meeting-house door of their county one month before solemnizing, that the marriage be solemnized by taking one another as husband and wife before sufficient witnesses, and that a certificate signed by the parties and at least twelve witnesses be returned to the county register. A person marrying contrary to the chapter paid £10, and a person joining others in marriage contrary to it paid £20 ↩ ↩
10. "An Act for the Preventing of Clandestine Marriages," Act of 28 October 1701, ch. 109, § I, in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 2, 1700 to 1712 (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, 1896); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge06unkngoog : accessed 11 August 2026). The section requires that parents or guardians "shall (if conveniently they can) be first consulted with," that the parties' intentions be affixed on the courthouse or meeting-house door a month before solemnization, and that the marriage be solemnized before twelve sufficient witnesses, with the certificate returned to the county register. A servant marrying without the consent of master or mistress served a further year ↩
11. Act of 14 February 1729–30, ch. 311, § I, in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 4, 1724 to 1744 (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, 1897); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge01martgoog : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
12. May, Marriage Laws and Decisions, 360, digesting Digest of Pennsylvania Statute Law (1920), §§ 14556, 14568. Section 14556 requires the consent of a parent or guardian where either party is under twenty-one, given personally before the clerk or certified in writing attested by two adult witnesses; § 14568 provides that nothing in the act authorizes the marriage of persons under legal age without that consent ↩
13. May, Marriage Laws and Decisions, 363–64, collecting the Pennsylvania decisions holding that words in the present tense create the marriage without any ceremony, and that cohabitation together with general reputation as husband and wife raises a presumption that a marriage contract was made ↩
14. Act of 23 November 2004, P. L. 954, No. 144, now 23 Pa.C.S. § 1103, barring common-law marriages contracted after 1 January 2005 and expressly preserving those contracted on or before that date; judicial abolition, prospective only, in PNC Bank Corp. v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board (Stamos), 831 A.2d 1269 (Pa. Commw. Ct. 2003) ↩
15. Digest of Pennsylvania Statute Law 1920 (Complete) (St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1921), pt. 2, p. 1424, § 14559, headed "Penalty for solemnizing marriage without license," under which an officiant or attesting witness acting without the proper license "shall forfeit and pay the sum of one hundred dollars, to and for the use of the county in which said marriage was solemnized," carried from the act of 23 June 1885, P. L. 146, § 5; page images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000020600563&seq=96 : accessed 11 August 2026). That the requirement of a license is directory only, so that a marriage good at common law stood without one, is collected in May, Marriage Laws and Decisions, 359, 363 ↩
16. Act of 23 June 1885, P. L. 146, in Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1885, 146; digital images, Session Laws Preservation Project, Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws-by-Year : accessed 11 August 2026); for the effective date and the docket the act created, see Chester County Archives, "Guide to Marriage Records" (https://www.chesco.org/1174/Marriage-Records : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
17. May, Marriage Laws and Decisions, 361–62, 366, digesting Digest of Pennsylvania Statute Law (1920), §§ 14553, 14563, 14564. The docket records the ages and residence of the parties, and the application records the name, color, occupation, birthplace, and residence of the parties and their parents, the number of the marriage, and how any earlier one ended. Under the heading "Proper Civil and Racial Status" May records "No provision as to validity of marriage" for Pennsylvania ↩ ↩
18. May, Marriage Laws and Decisions, 366, digesting Digest of Pennsylvania Statute Law (1920), §§ 7907, 9141, 14548, with the Pennsylvania column of the chart of forbidden relationships at 477. Marriages within the forbidden degrees are void, the invalidity cannot be inquired into after the death of either spouse, and intermarriage within those degrees is punishable by a fine not exceeding $500 and imprisonment not exceeding three years ↩
19. "An act making it unlawful for first cousins to be joined in marriage, and declaring all marriages contracted after the first day of January, Anno Domini one thousand nine hundred and two, in violation of this act, void," Act of 24 June 1901, P. L. 597, § 1, in Pamphlet Laws of Pennsylvania, Session of 1901, 597; digital images, Session Laws Preservation Project, Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws-by-Year : accessed 11 August 2026). The act became law by operation of law on 24 June 1901, without the Governor's signature, and by its own terms reaches only marriages contracted after 1 January 1902. That later date is why Geoffrey May, writing in 1929, gives the enactment as 1902; see May, Marriage Laws and Decisions, 366, digesting Digest of Pennsylvania Statute Law (1920), § 14547. The act's title and date, its repeal by The Marriage Law of 22 August 1953, P. L. 1344, and the deliberate omission of first cousins from the forbidden degrees in the Act of 31 March 1860, P. L. 382, are all set out in Pennsylvania, Joint State Government Commission, Proposed Marriage and Divorce Codes for Pennsylvania (Harrisburg: Joint State Government Commission, June 1961), 20 and 71 (https://jsg.legis.state.pa.us/resources/documents/ftp/publications/1961-06-01%201961%20proposed%20marriage%20and%20divorce%20codes%20for%20pa.pdf : accessed 11 August 2026). That such a marriage is voidable rather than void, and needs a judicial decree, is McClain v. McClain, 40 Pa. Super. 248 (1909); that Pennsylvania treats a first-cousin marriage contracted in a state which permits it as valid is Schofield v. Schofield (No. 1), 51 Pa. Super. 564 (1912) ↩
20. May, Marriage Laws and Decisions, 366–67, digesting Digest of Pennsylvania Statute Law (1920), §§ 7710, 9142. Section 7710 sets the penalty for a second marriage during the life of an undivorced spouse, with a proviso for a spouse who marries again "upon false rumor, in appearance well founded, of the death of the other when such other has been absent for two whole years"; § 9142 gives the returning absentee six months to insist on restoration or to have his own marriage dissolved ↩
21. Act of 8 May 1854, § 4, as digested in John Purdon, comp., A Digest of the Laws of Pennsylvania, from the Year One Thousand Seven Hundred to the Tenth Day of July, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventy-two, 10th ed., rev. Frederick C. Brightly, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Kay & Brother, 1873), 2: title "Liquors," § 36; digital images of vol. 2, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/adigestlawspenn00coodgoog : accessed 11 August 2026). The section reads that "any judge, justice or clergyman who shall perform the marriage ceremony between parties, when either of said parties is intoxicated, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor; and upon conviction thereof, shall pay a fine of fifty dollars, and be imprisoned, at the discretion of the court, not exceeding sixty days." The same provision is printed again in the same volume at title "Marriage," § 8. Still in force in the 1920s as Digest of Pennsylvania Statute Law (1920), §§ 14551, 14044, digested in May, Marriage Laws and Decisions, 364 ↩
22. May, Marriage Laws and Decisions, 361–62, digesting Digest of Pennsylvania Statute Law (1920), §§ 14564, 14566 ↩
23. May, Marriage Laws and Decisions, 360, digesting Digest of Pennsylvania Statute Law (1920), § 14567 ↩
24. "An Act for the Better Regulating of Negroes in This Province," Act of 5 March 1725–26, ch. 292, §§ VII–VIII, in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 4, 1724 to 1744 (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, 1897); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge01martgoog : accessed 11 August 2026). The title is the act's own ↩
25. "An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery," Act of 1 March 1780, ch. 881, § XIV, in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 10, 1779 to 1781 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1904); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlargeo10penn : accessed 11 August 2026). The section repeals ch. 292 by name, together with the 1705–06 act that provided a separate trial process for Black defendants ↩
26. Blackstone, Commentaries, 1:441–445, book 1, chapter 15: "By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage." Transcription, The Avalon Project, Yale Law School (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk1ch15.asp : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
27. Act of 22 February 1717–18, ch. 226, §§ I–II, in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 3, 1712 to 1724 (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, 1896); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge00martgoog : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
28. Act of 4 May 1855, P. L. 430, §§ 2, 4, in Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1855, 430; digital images, Session Laws Preservation Project, Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws-by-Year : accessed 11 August 2026); and see Chester County Archives, "Hannah H. T. Elliott: Chester County Feme Sole Trader" (https://www.chesco.org/1879/Chester-County-Feme-Sole-Trader : accessed 11 August 2026), for the petition and decree the act produced ↩
29. Act of 11 April 1848, P. L. 536, §§ 1–2, in Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1848, 536; digital images, Session Laws Preservation Project, Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws-by-Year : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
30. Act of 8 June 1893, P. L. 344, § 1, in Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1893, 344; digital images, Session Laws Preservation Project, Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws-by-Year : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
31. Act of 24 February 1770, ch. 605, § II, in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 7, 1765 to 1770 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1900), 331; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge01carsgoog : accessed 11 August 2026), providing the mode where husband and wife "incline to dispose of and convey the estate of the wife, or her right of, in or to any lands, tenements or hereditaments whatsoever." That the wife's joinder was what barred her claim on her husband's own land appears on the face of the Intestate Act of 1917, § 3 (citation 32), which fixes the widow's share "in lands aliened by the husband in his lifetime without her joining in the conveyance" ↩
32. Intestate Act of 7 June 1917, P. L. 429, § 3, in The Acts of 1917 of the State of Pennsylvania: Intestate Act, Wills Act, Fiduciaries Act, Orphans' Court Partition Act, Revised Price Act, Register of Wills Act, Orphans' Court Act (Pittsburgh: Colonial Trust Company, 1917); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsof1917ofstat00penn : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
33. Bridgeford v. Groh, 306 Pa. 566 (1932); CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4093516/bridgeford-v-groh-et-ux/ : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
34. Scott v. Crosdale, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 127 (Pa. 1791); Justia (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/2/127/ : accessed 11 August 2026), an action of dower in Bucks County against a purchaser of land sold by the sheriff under a mortgage the husband executed and to which the wife was no party. See also George L. Haskins, "The Defeasibility of Dower," 98 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 826 (1950) (https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8253&context=penn_law_review : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
35. "An Act for the Better Confirmation of the Estates of Persons Holding or Claiming under Feme-Coverts, and for Establishing a Mode by Which Husband and Wife May Hereafter Convey Their Estates," Act of 24 February 1770, ch. 605, § II, in Statutes at Large, vol. 7, 331 ↩
36. Act of 24 February 1770, ch. 605, preamble and §§ I, III, in Statutes at Large, vol. 7, 330–32 ↩
37. "An Act Relating to the Rights of Property of Husband and Wife," Act of 11 April 1856, No. 334, § 1, in Laws of the General Assembly of the State of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1856 (Harrisburg: A. Boyd Hamilton, State Printer, 1856), 315; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/lawsofgeneralas_1856penn : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
38. "An Act Regulating Acknowledgments, by Married Women, of Deeds, Mortgages, and All Other Instruments of Writing Required by Law to Be Acknowledged," No. 35, approved 4 April 1901, in Pamphlet Laws of Pennsylvania, Session of 1901, 67; digital images, Session Laws Preservation Project, Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws/View-Document/19001999/1901/0/act/0035.pdf : accessed 11 August 2026); cited as P. L. 67. Section 1 provides that the acknowledgment of a married woman "shall be taken by any judge, justice of the peace, notary public, or other person authorized by law to take acknowledgments of deeds, et cetera, in same manner and form as though said married woman were feme-sole; said acknowledgment to have the same force and effect as if taken separate and apart from the husband of said married woman"; section 2 repeals all inconsistent acts. Carried forward as 21 P.S. § 82 ↩
39. Rosche v. McCoy, 397 Pa. 615, 156 A.2d 307 (1959), stating the Pennsylvania rule that competency is the rule and incompetency the exception, that the burden of showing incompetency lies on the party asserting it, and that a child witness is examined by the trial judge before testifying; construing the Act of 23 May 1887, P. L. 158, 19 P.S. § 681 et seq., which repealed the Act of 15 April 1869, P. L. 30, and rendered no person incompetent who had been competent before it ↩ ↩ ↩
40. "Laws Agreed Upon in England," 5 May 1682, art. Twenty, in Charter to William Penn, and Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg: Lane S. Hart, State Printer, 1879), 101, requiring charters, gifts, grants, and conveyances of land made in the province to be enrolled within two months, "else to be void in law"; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/chartertowillia01commgoog : accessed 11 August 2026). "An Act for Acknowledging and Recording of Deeds," Act of 28 May 1715, ch. 208, in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 3, 1712 to 1724 (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, 1896); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge00martgoog : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
41. Act of 1 March 1780, ch. 881, § V, in Statutes at Large, vol. 10; the registers, the returns of servant children, and the recorded manumissions are described in Chester County Archives, "Negro Servant Returns, 1788–1821" (https://www.chesco.org/1724/Negro-Servant-Returns-1788-1821 : accessed 11 August 2026); the title is the repository's own ↩
42. Act of 1 March 1780, ch. 881, § IV, in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 10, 1779 to 1781 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1904), 67; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlargeo10penn : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
43. "Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania, 1682–1700," ch. CX, in Charter to William Penn, and Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg: Lane S. Hart, State Printer, 1879), 142; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/chartertowillia01commgoog : accessed 11 August 2026): "the Estate of an Intestate shall go to his wife, his child or Children; And if hee leaveth no Wife, child nor children, it shall go to his brothers and sisters if any be; or to the children of such brothers and sisters," and failing those, half to the parents and half to the next of kin, with claims to be made within three years. Chapter CXI required executors and guardians of persons under age to give bond to the court and to pass their accounts there ↩
44. "An Act for Ascertaining the Descent of Lands, and Better Disposition of the Estates of Persons Intestate," Act of 27 November 1700, ch. 31, §§ I (personal estate, the eldest son's double portion, and the widow's half where no children survived), III (the widow's third of the land for life), in Statutes at Large, vol. 2; repealed by the Queen in Council 7 February 1705–06, and re-enacted as "An Act for the Better Settling of Intestates' Estates," Act of 12 January 1705–06, ch. 135 ↩
45. Act of 19 April 1794, ch. 1751, § III, in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 15, 1794–1797 (Harrisburg: C. E. Aughinbaugh, 1911); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge00goog : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
46. Act of 19 April 1794, ch. 1751, § IV, in Statutes at Large, vol. 15 ↩
47. Act of 8 April 1833, P. L. 315, § 1, in Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1833, 315; digital images, Session Laws Preservation Project, Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws-by-Year : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
48. Intestate Act of 1917, § 1(a), (b), in Acts of 1917 ↩
49. Intestate Act of 1917, § 2(a), in Acts of 1917, as amended by the Act of 11 July 1917, P. L. 755, which added the proviso confining the five-thousand-dollar allowance to actual intestacy and withholding it from a surviving spouse who elects to take against the will; see Raymond M. Remick, The Statutory Law of Decedents' Estates in Pennsylvania, with Annotations and Forms (Philadelphia: Geo. T. Bisel Co., 1922), preface, recording that the amending act was approved on 11 July 1917 and amended clause 2(a); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutorylawofde00remiiala : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
50. Intestate Act of 24 April 1947, No. 37, P. L. 80, in Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1947, 80; digital images, Session Laws Preservation Project, Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws-by-Year : accessed 11 August 2026). The changes are set out section by section against the act of 1917 in Robert W. Evans Jr., "Substantial Changes in the Intestate Law Effective January 1, 1948," 52 Dickinson Law Review 39 (1947) (https://insight.dickinsonlaw.psu.edu/dlra/vol52/iss1/3 : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
51. Report of the Commissioners, Hon. John Marshall Gest, Hon. Thos. J. Baldridge, and Hon. George E. Alter, printed with the Acts of 1917, setting out the law the Intestate Act replaced: where there was no issue the surviving husband took all his wife's real estate for life as tenant by the curtesy and all her personal estate, and where there was issue he divided the personal estate with the children and took a child's share ↩
52. Intestate Act of 1917, §§ 3–4, in Acts of 1917, declaring the widow's share to be "in lieu and full satisfaction of her dower at common law so far as relates to land of which the husband died seised," and the surviving husband's share to be in lieu and full satisfaction of his curtesy; § 1 puts real and personal estate on one scheme, a change the Commissioners set out in their preliminary note to the act ↩
53. Act of 14 April 1851, No. 331, § 5, in Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1851 (Harrisburg: Theo. Fenn & Co., Printers to the State, 1851), 612; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/lawsofgeneralas_1851penn : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
54. Wills Act of 7 June 1917, P. L. 403, § 23, in Acts of 1917 ↩
55. Wills Act of 1917, § 8(a)–(c), in Acts of 1917; carried from the Act of 8 April 1833, P. L. 249, § 4, as noted in Remick, Statutory Law of Decedents' Estates ↩
56. Act of 29 March 1832, P. L. 190, § 17, as digested in Purdon, Digest of the Laws of Pennsylvania, 2: title "Orphans' Court," § 17 ↩
57. Fiduciaries Act of 7 June 1917, P. L. 447, § 59(f), in Acts of 1917, providing that where the appointment is made on the petition of a next friend, "the minor, if of the age of fourteen or on attaining that age, may subsequently appear and choose his guardian" ↩
58. Intestate Act of 1917, § 15(a)–(c), in Acts of 1917 ↩
59. Act of 14 May 1857, as digested in Purdon, Digest of the Laws of Pennsylvania, 2: title "Marriage," §§ 9–10. Section 9 provides that where the father and mother of a child born outside marriage "shall enter into the bonds of lawful wedlock and cohabit, such child or children shall thereby become legitimated, and enjoy all the rights and privileges as if they had been born during the wedlock of their parents." Section 10 applies the act to cases arising before its date as well as after, "Provided, That no estate already vested, shall be divested by this act" ↩
60. Intestate Act of 1917, § 15(d), in Acts of 1917 ↩
61. Wills Act of 1917, § 1, in Acts of 1917: "every person of sound mind and of the age of twenty-one years or upwards, whether married or single" ↩
62. Act of 8 April 1833, P. L. 249, §§ 1, 3, as printed and annotated in Remick, Statutory Law of Decedents' Estates. Remick notes that the 1917 act folded § 3 into § 1 by inserting the words "of the age of twenty-one years or upwards, whether married or single" ↩
63. "An Act Concerning the Probates of Written and Nuncupative Wills and for Confirming Devises of Lands," Act of 12 January 1705–06, ch. 133, in Statutes at Large, vol. 2, 194–96, carried from the Act of 27 November 1700, ch. 43. The act governs proof, probate, and nuncupative wills and fixes no age for a testator, and no other colonial statute did. The common-law ages received under the Act of 1777 (citation 1) and stated in Blackstone (citation 4) therefore governed until the Act of 8 April 1833 first set one ↩
64. Wills Act of 1917, §§ 2–3, in Acts of 1917; carried from the Act of 8 April 1833, P. L. 249, § 6 ↩
65. Wills Act of 1917, § 4(a)–(c), in Acts of 1917 ↩
66. Wills Act of 1917, § 6, in Acts of 1917; carried from the Act of 7 June 1911, P. L. 702, § 1 ↩
67. Fiduciaries Act of 1917, § 4, in Acts of 1917, empowering the register of wills, when the circumstances of the case require, to grant letters of administration durante minoritate, meaning during the minority, security to be entered as in other cases of administration ↩
68. "An Act for Raising of County Rates and Levies," Act of 20 March 1724–25, ch. 284, § IV, in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 4, 1724 to 1744 (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, 1897); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge01martgoog : accessed 11 August 2026). The section sets the ages, caps county rates at three pence in the pound and nine shillings a head, exempts the Proprietary's estate, and directs regard to the poor and to men with many children. It sets no upper age. The note printed with the act traces the chain of re-enactments forward into the nineteenth century ↩ ↩
69. Act of 20 March 1777, ch. 752, § VII (§ VIII of the pamphlet-law numbering), in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 9, 1776 to 1779 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1903); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge11unkngoog : accessed 11 August 2026); supplemented by the Act of 13 October 1777, ch. 767 ↩
70. "An Act to Raise and Collect County Rates and Levies," Act of 11 April 1799, in Laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Smith's Laws); digital images, Session Laws Preservation Project, Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws-by-Year : accessed 11 August 2026). Its contents, and those of the Act of 1795, "An Act to Regulate the Mode of Assessing and Collecting County Rates and Levies," are set out in Lee Soltow and Kenneth W. Keller, "Rural Pennsylvania in 1800: A Portrait from the Septennial Census," Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 49, no. 1 (January 1982): 28–29 (https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/view/24289 : accessed 11 August 2026): assessors valued land, houses, livestock, enslaved people, mills, furnaces, and ferries; single free men of 21 and over without occupation or property were taxed and listed by name; and county commissioners could excuse the indigent ↩ ↩
71. "An act relating to county rates and levies and township rates and levies," Act of 15 April 1834, P. L. 509, No. 232; Pennsylvania General Assembly (https://www.palegis.us/statutes/unconsolidated/law-information?sessYr=1834&sessInd=0&actNum=0232. : accessed 11 August 2026). Sections of the act were still being amended in 1935 and 1974, which is why its text is carried on the General Assembly's site ↩
72. Chester County Archives, "19th Century Tax Records" (https://www.chesco.org/1730/19th-Century-Tax-Records : accessed 11 August 2026), for the triennial cycle, the years it fell on, the survival of the terms "freeman" and "inmate," and the recording of occupation. For what those terms meant on the list, see Soltow and Keller, "Rural Pennsylvania in 1800," 29–30, and Judy G. Russell, "Another kind of inmate," The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/2014/08/22/another-kind-of-inmate/ : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
73. Pennsylvania, Constitution of 1790, art. III, § 1 (https://www.paconstitution.org/texts-of-the-constitution/1790-2/); Constitution of 1838, art. III, § 1 (https://www.paconstitution.org/texts-of-the-constitution/1838-2/); and Constitution of 1874, art. VIII, § 1 (https://www.paconstitution.org/texts-of-the-constitution/1874-2/); transcriptions, Pennsylvania Constitution Project (accessed 11 August 2026). Each requires payment of a state or county tax within two years before the election, with a proviso that the sons of qualified voters between twenty-one and twenty-two may vote although they have not paid taxes. The provision of 1838 opens "every white freeman of the age of twenty-one years"; that of 1874 opens "every male citizen twenty-one years of age" ↩ ↩
74. The General County Assessment Law, Act of 22 May 1933, P. L. 853, No. 155, art. II, in Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1933, 853; digital images, Session Laws Preservation Project, Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws-by-Year : accessed 11 August 2026), carrying forward the county tax on trades, occupations, and professions and the per capita or head tax ↩
75. "Laws Agreed Upon in England," 5 May 1682, art. Eight, in Charter to William Penn, and Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania, Passed between the Years 1682 and 1700, Preceded by Duke of York's Laws in Force from the Year 1676 to the Year 1682 (Harrisburg: Lane S. Hart, State Printer, 1879), 99–100; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/chartertowillia01commgoog : accessed 11 August 2026): "That all trials shall be by twelve men, and as near as may be peers, or equals, and of the neighborhood, and men without just exception," with twenty-four returned by the sheriff for a grand inquest in cases of life, and reasonable challenges always admitted. No colonial or state act down to 1805 added a property qualification ↩
76. "An Act Directing the Mode of Selecting and Returning Jurors," Act of 29 March 1805, ch. 2589, in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 17, 1802–1805 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1915), 1011–20; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlargeo_17penn : accessed 11 August 2026). Section XVI limited the act to three years, which is why it needed reviving. The interlude is "A Supplement to the Act Entitled 'An Act Directing the Mode of Selecting and Returning Jurors,'" Act of 4 April 1807, ch. 2809, and its repeal, "An Act to Repeal So Much of an Act Passed April Fourth, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Seven, as Directs the Township Assessors to Select and Return Jurors," Act of 4 April 1809, ch. 3106, which repealed the assessors' duties and revived the act of 1805 "and made perpetual" from 1 September 1809, both in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 18, 1806–1809 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1915), 469–72 and 1133; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlargeo_a18penn : accessed 11 August 2026). Chapter numbers here are the Statutes at Large numbering ↩ ↩
77. "For the Better and More Impartial Selection of Persons to Serve as Jurors, in Each of the Counties of This Commonwealth," Act of 10 April 1867, No. 41, § 2, in Laws of the General Assembly of the State of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1867 (Harrisburg: Singerly & Myers, State Printers, 1867), 62–64; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/lawsofgeneralas_1867penn : accessed 11 August 2026); cited as P. L. 62. Section 4 repeals the duty of the sheriff and county commissioners to select and draw jurors from 1 December 1867 ↩
78. Act of 10 April 1867, No. 41, § 7, concluding proviso: "That the provisions of this act shall not apply to the city of Philadelphia" ↩
79. Commonwealth v. Maxwell, 271 Pa. 378 (1921), construing the Act of 10 April 1867, § 2, in light of the Nineteenth Amendment ↩
80. Blackstone, Commentaries, 4:22–24, book 4, chapter 2; transcription, The Avalon Project, Yale Law School (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk4ch2.asp : accessed 11 August 2026). Infants under the age of discretion "ought not to be punished by any criminal prosecution whatever," a child between seven and fourteen is presumed incapable but may be found capable of mischief on proof, and "an infant, above the age of fourteen, is equally liable to suffer, as a person of the full age." These are the rules Pennsylvania received in 1777 (citation 1); no colonial or state statute down to 1901 altered them ↩
81. Act of 21 May 1901, P. L. 279; held unconstitutional in Mansfield's Case, 22 Pa. Super. 224 (1903), as a denial of the jury trial guaranteed by the Pennsylvania Constitution, art. I, §§ 6, 9 ↩
82. Act of 23 April 1903, P. L. 274; superseded by the Juvenile Court Law of 2 June 1933, P. L. 1433; both in Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for their years; digital images, Session Laws Preservation Project, Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws-by-Year : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩ ↩
83. Commonwealth v. Fisher, 213 Pa. 48, 53–54 (1905) ↩ ↩
84. Act of 23 May 1887, P. L. 158, § 2(b), later 19 P.S. § 683, barring a husband or wife from testifying against the other, and § 5(c), later 42 Pa.C.S. § 5924(b)(1), making each competent to testify against the other in divorce; in Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Passed at the Session of 1887, 158; digital images, Session Laws Preservation Project, Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (https://www.palrb.gov/Preservation/Pamphlet-Laws-by-Year : accessed 11 August 2026). The sections and their successors are traced in Commonwealth v. Hancharik, 534 Pa. 435 (1993) ↩
85. Act of 1 March 1780, ch. 881, § VII, in Statutes at Large, vol. 10 ↩

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.