Tennessee Historical Law Guide

Contents

Legal Ages at a Glance

General Principles

An English legal system received through North Carolina

Tennessee's law came from England by way of North Carolina. Tennessee was carved out of North Carolina's western lands, and when North Carolina gave that territory to the United States in 1789 the gift carried a condition: North Carolina's law stayed in force there until the new government changed it. Tennessee took up the common law of England — judge-made law, handed down through court decisions rather than written by a legislature — as it stood in 1776. It came in through North Carolina acts of 1715 and 1778 and was continued by a Tennessee act of 1789¹. The territory was organized in 1790, and Tennessee became a state on 1 June 1796.

Property in Tennessee belonged to the husband or to the wife separately, according to which of them acquired it — though for most of this period a husband managed his wife's property and took the income from it, as the marriage rules below explain.

North Carolina acts that never left

Two of the rules that matter most to genealogists — dower, and the way land passed to children — are North Carolina acts that came in at the separation and were never repealed outright. Both are older than any Tennessee statute book, so both must be traced through the Tennessee codes rather than through the early Tennessee session laws. For any given year, the rule in force is the statute where one had been passed by then, and the received common law otherwise.

Legal Age of Adulthood

Majority at twenty-one

Full legal age in Tennessee was 21, for women and men alike, throughout the period². Anyone under 21 was an "infant" in legal language, even a 20-year-old.

A minor's legal capacity

A minor could own property at any age. What the law limited was the power to sign it away. A minor's contract, including a deed, was voidable — it held good until the minor chose to undo it, which he could do while still under 21 or after turning 21. The exception was a contract he had procured by deliberate fraud³.

Because of that, a minor's land was sold through a court. The chancery court — a court that could order relief the ordinary courts could not — could approve and order the sale of a minor's real or personal property, and a minor over 14 was made a party to the case in person⁴. A child's land sale therefore leaves a chancery case file rather than a plain deed, and that file names the family and recites how the child came by the land.

A minor between 18 and 21 could petition the chancery court to have the disabilities of minority removed, either for one particular purpose or generally⁵. A girl's guardianship ran on to 21 whether or not she married⁶.

Marriage

How a marriage was made

A valid Tennessee marriage required a license and a ceremony performed by someone authorized to perform it. The license issued from the clerk of the county court where the bride lived, and the officiant returned it to that clerk within six months⁷. Marriage came from that ceremony, which is why Tennessee had no common-law marriage. If a couple who had lived together as husband and wife without one came before a judge, neither of them would ordinarily be allowed to deny the relationship, so for everyday civil purposes the arrangement was treated much as a marriage would be⁷. Such a couple left no marriage record, and that absence may be the explanation for a search that fails.

Before issuing the license the clerk took a marriage bond — a promise to pay the State twelve hundred and fifty dollars, backed by a surety, on the condition that there was no lawful cause to obstruct the marriage⁷. That surety is the bondsman, and he is worth collecting: he was often the bride's father or brother. Tennessee counties kept bonds and licenses together in the same files from the 1790s onward, so both may survive for the same couple.

The record a performed marriage left is thinner than the rules suggest. The county court clerk's entry in a marriage ledger is the official record, and it usually gives the names of the bride and groom, the minister or justice who performed the ceremony, and sometimes the bondsman. Parents' names enter the record late — in some counties from the 1880s, in others not until the mid-1920s.

A performed marriage stood on its own footing whatever went wrong with the paperwork. The penalty for a defective license fell on the clerk who issued it or the official who performed the ceremony, and the marriage itself remained valid⁸. A runaway or irregular Tennessee marriage is a real marriage, and the children of it are legitimate.

Who was old enough to marry

Into the twentieth century the common-law ages governed: a boy could marry at 14, a girl at 12. A statutory minimum age of 16 for both sexes arrived with the licensing act of 1937, which also required a sworn written application, a three-day waiting period, and notice to the parent, guardian, or nearest relative of an applicant under 21. A court could waive the waiting period or the age limit for good cause⁹.

A marriage in which either party was under 16 stood until a court set it aside, and the court had a discretion whether to set it aside at all¹⁰. In practice an ancestor's underage marriage was almost certainly valid.

Parental consent

The 1937 act made consent a condition of the license. If an applicant was under 21, the parents, guardian, or nearest relative had to sign the application and swear to their consent, and an application they signed needed no waiting period and no mailed notice¹¹. From 1937, then, a marriage file for a minor should hold a signed consent naming a parent or guardian — often the only document in the county records that names the bride's or groom's parents.

For the years before 1937 the papers a county file holds are the bond and the license. Many Tennessee marriage files of that period hold no consent document at all.

Void and voidable marriages

A marriage between close relatives was void, as was a marriage contracted while an earlier husband or wife was living. For this purpose the first marriage counted as ended if the spouse had been absent five years and was not known to the other to be living¹².

Tennessee honored a marriage that was valid where it was celebrated, except where the couple had left the state in order to evade a Tennessee law resting on a settled state policy¹³.

Enslaved people and people of color

Enslaved people had no legal capacity to marry, so no civil marriage record was made for an enslaved couple, however long they lived together as husband and wife.

Tennessee fixed that in 1866. An act passed on 26 May declared that all free persons of color who had lived together as husband and wife in the state while in slavery were man and wife. Their children were entitled to inherit from those parents as fully as the children of white citizens¹⁴. The couple became married by force of the statute itself, so a couple who did nothing at all were married from that day.

That has a sharp consequence for research. The act called for no application, no license, and no entry in any county book, so it left no state record of its own. When a Tennessee couple of this period does appear in a register, the record is normally a federal one. Freedmen's Bureau officials issued and registered marriage certificates in the same years, and those certificates can record how long a couple had been together and whether they had once been separated by sale.

The Code of 1858 barred a white person from marrying anyone of African descent within three generations. It declared any such marriage null and void, and it made the couple, the clerk who issued the license, and the minister or magistrate who performed the ceremony guilty of a misdemeanor and liable to a $500 penalty¹⁵.

The Constitution of 1870 wrote the ban into the constitution itself, reaching both marriage and living together as man and wife, and directed the legislature to enforce it. The General Assembly did so the same year by an act making the offense a felony punishable by one to five years in the penitentiary¹⁶. The ban held through 1950.

Property Ownership

Which men could own land

A man of full age owned land outright and sold it freely; 21 was the only age that mattered. Marriage changed nothing for him — a married man bought, sold, and devised (gave away by will) his own land in his own right, and his deed carried his signature alone.

A foreign-born man could buy and hold land in Tennessee. Inheriting was the point at which citizenship mattered, and the Code of 1858 carried its own rules for land passing to or through someone who was not a citizen¹⁷. Once he became a citizen he took land like anyone else.

Enslaved men had no legal capacity to own property of any kind. Anything in their hands belonged in law to the enslaver, and they themselves appear in estate inventories as property. Free men of color could acquire, hold, and convey land, and did so throughout the period. What the law withheld from them was the standing that ordinarily went with ownership — the right to testify, to vote, to hold office — rather than the capacity to hold title.

Single women and widows

A single woman or a widow — a feme sole, "woman alone" — could buy, own, sell, mortgage, sue, and be sued exactly as a man could. A woman transacting freely in the deed books is almost always unmarried or widowed.

Married women before 1914

A married woman was a feme covert, "covered woman," under coverture — the common-law rule that a wife's legal identity merged into her husband's. He managed her property and took the income from her land, and her contracts had no force on their own.

She could still own land, and two signatures moved it. Her husband joined in the deed, and her own signature was taken by privy examination — a private interview with an official, apart from her husband, certifying that she signed of her own free will. The examining officer wrote a certificate of that interview onto the deed. So a Tennessee deed of this period conveying a wife's land carries her husband's signature, her own, and that certificate¹⁸.

Married women from 1914

The Married Women's Emancipation Act, passed in 1913 and in force from 1 January 1914, removed every disability of coverture. From then on a married woman could acquire, hold, manage, and convey property, make contracts, and sue and be sued as if she were single¹⁹. The courts read the act as stripping the husband of all his old rights in his wife's property during the marriage²⁰.

One old form of ownership went out with coverture and came back. Land conveyed to husband and wife together had passed to them as an estate by the entirety, in which the survivor took the whole. The courts held that the 1913 act abolished that estate, and the legislature restored it by an act in force from 16 April 1919. Deeds to husband and wife executed between 1 January 1914 and 16 April 1919 fall in the gap and created no estate by the entirety, so for a couple who bought land in those five years the survivor did not automatically take the whole²¹.

The private examination outlasted coverture by five years. It ended in 1919, when the legislature provided that a married person's acknowledgment could be taken in the same form as a single person's, with no examination apart from the spouse¹⁸. On a deed from 1919 onward there is no certificate of privy examination to look for.

The husband's curtesy also survived. Curtesy is a widower's life interest — the use of the land for the rest of his own life — in his late wife's land. In Tennessee it arose only at her death, so a married woman could sell her own land during the marriage without her husband joining, though she could not defeat his curtesy by will²².

When a wife had to sign her husband's deed

The rule turns on dower, and in Tennessee dower reached less land than researchers usually expect. Dower is a widow's life estate — the use of the land for her lifetime, not ownership of it. Tennessee's dower descends from the North Carolina acts of 1715 and 1784²³. A widow had the use of one-third of the land her husband owned when he died, for the rest of her life. The family dwelling house counted in her third, and the third was measured against the whole estate rather than against each separate tract²⁴.

Because dower reached only what he still held when he died, land a husband sold during his life passed to the buyer free of any dower claim, and his deed carried his signature alone. A Tennessee deed of the husband's own land signed by him only is the ordinary form, and it is equally the form used by a married man and a single one. When a wife's name does appear, it means one of three things:

The homestead is worth knowing on its own account. The Constitution of 1870 protected a family home worth up to $1,000 from the head of the family's creditors. On his death it went to his widow for the rest of her life, and it stayed exempt while his children occupied it during their minority²⁵.

Deeds were recorded with the county register of deeds, and a deed was sometimes recorded years after it was written, so a deed made in 1865 may sit in a book covering the 1870s.

Which children could own land

A child could own land at any age, taking it by inheritance, gift, or purchase just as an adult did. Conveying it was the constraint, and it went through the chancery court⁴. 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; competency, not age, was the test²⁶. In practice deed witnesses were adults, and often relatives or neighbors of the seller, since a witness might have to appear years later to prove the deed. Those two names at the foot of a deed are worth collecting.

Inheritance

Two separate systems

When a person died intestate — without a will — Tennessee divided the estate under two separate systems. Land descended by one set of rules, and everything else was distributed under another.

Land: descent among the children

Tennessee received North Carolina's act of 1784, which ended primogeniture — the old rule giving the eldest son all the land. In its place the land of an owner who died without a will went to all his sons, divided equally among them, and to the daughters only if there were no sons. If a child had died in the owner's lifetime, that child's own children took the share their parent would have had. This is the rule for every death from the separation from North Carolina in 1789 until the Code of 1858 replaced it. It was still the law in 1836, when the statutes then in force were gathered into a single volume²⁷.

By the Code of 1858 sons and daughters shared alike: the land went to all the sons and daughters of the person who died, divided among them equally, with the children of a dead child standing in their parent's place²⁸. That is the rule through 1950. The Code of 1858 was not a mere reprint of the older statutes: the General Assembly enacted it, and it repealed the general acts it replaced, so the change to equal shares was made by the Code itself and by no earlier Tennessee act²⁸. A land division is therefore worth dating before it is read. Daughters took land beside their brothers only where the owner died after the Code took effect in 1858; before that they took only if there was no son living and no child of a dead son.

The land went to the children, and the surviving husband or wife took a life interest in it — the widow her dower, the widower his curtesy. If no heir able to inherit survived, the husband or wife took the land outright²⁹. This is why you so often find a Tennessee widow holding a life interest in a third of the farm while the children hold the title.

Personal property: the surviving spouse's share

Two different rules governed the money, livestock, furniture, and debts owed to the person who died, and confusing them is the most common mistake in reading a Tennessee estate division.

If a husband or wife died without a will, the survivor took a child's share, counted equally with each child, and took all of the goods left after the debts were paid if no child or grandchild survived. That rule held from the Code of 1858 through 1950 without change³⁰.

The earlier decades follow a different rule. Under the North Carolina act of 1766, which Tennessee received at the separation, a widow took one-third of the goods left after the debts were paid if children survived, and the children divided the rest. If no child survived she took a half — cut to a third by the act of 1784 — and the nearest relatives took what was left. Two Tennessee acts, of 1827 and of 1845–46, reshaped this rule between the received North Carolina law and the Code of 1858, and for a death in those years the acts themselves should be read in the session volume for the year³⁰.

If the person who died left a will and the survivor refused to take under it, a different measure applied. The survivor took one-third of the goods, on top of dower or curtesy in the land, if there was no child or not more than two; if there were more than two children the survivor took a child's share³¹.

So a widow with five children took a sixth either way, but a widow with one child took a half if her husband died without a will and a third if she refused to take under his will. Getting this right can make or break a family reconstructed from an estate division, because the arithmetic tells you how many children were alive when the estate was settled.

The year's support and the right to dissent

Until the court appointed someone to settle the estate, a widow could take possession of and manage her husband's goods, including the growing crops, and use what she needed of the crops and provisions to support herself and the family. On her application the county court then appointed three landowners to set apart a year's support, which became hers free of the estate's debts³². The year's-support papers ordinarily name the widow and the children.

If a husband or wife left a will the survivor disliked, the survivor could refuse to take under it and take instead as though there had been no will. This refusal, called a dissent, had to be put on record in open court within one year after the will was accepted by the court³³. The dissent, or its absence, sits in the probate file.

Minors and guardians

A child inherited at any age; the property was the child's from the moment the parent or other relative died. Managing it fell to a guardian, who gave bond and answered to the county court. Father and mother were joint natural guardians of their children and equally charged with managing the children's property, and where one died or could not act the other took over alone³⁴. Parents together, or the survivor of them, could appoint a guardian by will or by a written instrument, and the mother of a child born outside marriage could appoint one for that child³⁵.

A guardian was appointed chiefly because a minor owned property, since a minor could not give a valid receipt or settle an estate. If a child inherited nothing, often no guardianship record was created.

The court had a settled order of preference. If a minor owned property, the county court could appoint a special guardian to protect it. The father was preferred, or the mother if he was dead, unless the court thought the child's interest called for someone else. A wife whose husband had abandoned her without lawful cause could be appointed guardian of her own children, and so could a wife granted a divorce, in either case on giving bond³⁶. So a guardianship granted to someone other than a parent usually means both parents were dead or thought unfit.

The court chose the guardian, at every age, and no Tennessee statute let a minor of any age name his own³⁶. Age enters Tennessee guardianship records at a different point: when a lawsuit was filed to sell a child's land, a child over fourteen had to answer it himself rather than through a guardian⁴. A chancery file containing the child's own answer is therefore evidence the child had reached 14, which brackets a birth year.

Guardianship ended at 21, when the guardian filed a final settlement accounting for the property. Guardianships were county court business and are entered in its minute books. That final settlement is one of the most valuable documents in Tennessee genealogy: it dates the minor's coming of age, and so points to a birth year, and it often reveals the married surname of a girl who had reached 21.

Children born outside marriage

A child born outside marriage inherited from the mother, and the mother inherited that child's property if the child died leaving no children, husband, or wife³⁷. Inheriting from the father required a court order of legitimation. On a written petition setting out the reasons for it, the court, if satisfied, declared the child legitimate by an order written into its minutes. The effect was complete: it made the two parent and child in law, as though the child had been born to that parent in marriage³⁸. The order names the parent who asked for it.

Until 1866 one rule turned on race. A child of color could not inherit from its mother's husband unless the mother or the husband was a person of color³⁹. That bar ended with the act of 26 May 1866 giving people of color the right to inherit, but it governs any inheritance that opened before that date.

A county could also bring the reputed father before the county court and order him to support the child. The county did this only when the child was likely to fall on it for support⁴⁰, so for many children no record was created at all. When a case was brought, the papers name the mother, the reputed father, and the child.

Making a will

The age to make a will became 18, for land and goods alike, in 1941. Anyone of sound mind aged 18 or over could give away land or goods by will, and the act said plainly that this meant a man or a woman, single or married⁴¹.

Before 1941 the common law set two different ages. A will of land called for full age, 21. A will of goods — money, livestock, and household things — could be made by a boy of 14 or a girl of 12⁴².

The forms a will could take also changed in 1941, and the earlier rules are the ones that govern most surviving Tennessee wills. Down to 15 February 1941, a will of land had to be signed by the maker, or by another at the maker's direction and in the maker's presence. At least two witnesses then signed it while the maker watched, and neither of them could stand to receive anything under the gift of the land. A will of goods needed no witnesses at all⁴³.

A holographic will — one written out by the maker in his own hand, with his name written into it or signed at the end — passed land without any witness at all. Three things had to be shown: that it was found after death among the maker's valuable papers, or had been lodged with someone for safekeeping; that the maker's handwriting was generally known to those who knew him; and that three trustworthy witnesses swore they believed the whole of it was in his hand⁴³. Holographic wills are common in the Tennessee record, and those conditions explain why a will turns up among the deeds and receipts in an estate file.

From 1941 one rule covered land and goods together. Two witnesses signed, while the maker and each other watched; a holographic will needed no witnesses at the signing, but two had to swear later to the handwriting; and a spoken will, called a nuncupative will, was limited to someone in immediate danger of death who then died of it, and to goods of small value⁴¹.

A witness to a will could be of any age; what mattered was whether the witness understood an oath. Before 1941 a witness who stood to gain under a gift of land could not witness it, and the will failed as to the land. From 1941 a witness who stood to gain no longer broke the will, and gave up only whatever the will handed him beyond what he would have taken had there been no will⁴¹.

What the law required of an executor, executrix, or administrator was an oath and a bond, not a particular age. Before the clerk handed over the papers of appointment he swore the person in — to carry out the will, in an executor's case, or to do the duty faithfully in an administrator's. He then took a bond, backed by two or more people good for the money, for twice the value of the estate⁴⁴. Those backers are worth collecting: they were usually kin or close neighbors, and the bond names them.

Probate — the court's acceptance of a will and the settling of an estate — was county business, and the resulting file may hold the will, the bonds, a list of the property, the accounts, and the final division among the heirs.

Taxation

What was taxed

The state drew its money from taxes on polls, on property, on sales of land, enslaved people, and merchandise, on privileges such as keeping a store or a tavern, on lawsuits, and from fines⁴⁵. Two of those name individuals. The poll tax, also called a head tax, was a flat tax on a person rather than on property. The property tax fell on land and much else, and before 1865 enslaved people were taxed as property of their owners.

For genealogy the poll tax is the prize, because it lists men who owned nothing at all, which makes early tax lists into census substitutes.

From 1797 the state taxed land by the hundred acres, town lots, each free poll, and each enslaved person. Land was taxed at a uniform amount per acre until 1834, when it began to be taxed by value instead⁴⁶.

Who counted as a poll

Throughout, a poll was a man between 21 and 50⁴⁶. Which men were counted changed twice.

From 1797 the tax fell on free polls, without distinction of race. The Constitution of 1834 laid it on white polls alone and exempted free men of color from it, though property they owned was taxable like anyone else's⁴⁷. So a poll list made between 1834 and 1870 carries no free men of color, and their absence from one says nothing about where they lived.

The Code of 1858 restated the rule and listed who was excused: men wounded in military service, men who could not hear, speak, or see, men unable to work, ministers, and anyone excused by a particular law. A man who claimed he was unable to work asked the county court, which entered his exemption on the record; a certified copy of that entry told the tax collector to pass him by⁴⁸. That petition is a record in its own right, and it says something about a man's health.

Enslaved people were taxed as property rather than as polls. Those between 12 and 50 were taxable, and the tax was paid by the enslaver⁴⁹. They appear in a tax list, therefore, as a count and a value in the enslaver's entry, not by name. Assessors of the period wrote of a black poll as against a white poll; after the Civil War the lists combine the two into a single column of every taxable poll⁴⁶.

The Constitution of 1870 replaced the white-polls clause, and from then the tax fell on every male inhabitant between 21 and 50, with the same exemption for incapacity⁵⁰.

Two things about the rule help in dating. A man came onto the list at 21 and dropped off after 50, so his first and last appearances bracket those two birthdays — a man who vanishes from a poll list in his fifties has usually aged out rather than died or moved. And his age was reckoned as it stood on 10 January of the year, not on the day the assessor called, so the list answers to that date⁵⁰.

From 1870 the poll tax carried a second life as a voting requirement, and paying it was the one condition the Constitution allowed on the vote — which is why a poll-tax receipt turns up among a man's papers. The same two ages governed there: a man who had only just reached 21, or who had passed 50, did not have to show payment⁵¹. The tax itself outlasted the voting requirement. The legislature repealed it in 1943, the state supreme court struck the repeal down because the tax was written into the constitution, and the poll-tax provisions came out at the constitutional convention of 1953⁵².

Taxable ages at a glance

County tax lists survive for scattered years rather than continuously, and they name the taxable men of the county. From the 1870s they also name the owners of the surrounding land.

Courts

Jury service

Jurors were men of 21, and the law also required a juror to own land or head a household. That requirement ran to the whole panel, grand jury and trial jury alike, and not merely to onlookers called in to fill out a short jury⁵³. A man who sat on a nineteenth-century Tennessee jury will generally appear in the tax or land records as well.

Tennessee guaranteed trial by jury in its first constitution of 1796 and left the qualifications of jurors to the General Assembly, which fixed them by a run of jury acts through the first half of the nineteenth century. The Code of 1858 gathered those acts into the three sections above, and they were carried forward without change of substance into Shannon's Code and Williams' Code. For a juror in the years before 1858, read the jury act in force in the year, in the session volume for that year⁵³.

Criminal responsibility

The common law fixed the ages, and no Tennessee statute changed them for most of the period⁵⁴:

• Under 7 — a child was legally incapable of committing a crime.
• 7 to 14 — assumed incapable, unless the State proved the child knew the act was wrong.
• 14 and over — full criminal responsibility.

The Juvenile Court Act of 1911 reached children of sixteen and under, and it treated a child under sixteen who broke any state law or town ordinance as a delinquent child rather than a criminal. The county judge or chairman heard the case, and no other court could, though anyone with an interest could ask for a jury. A child found delinquent came under the court's control, which could keep him until he was 21. The line was not absolute: a child who had committed a misdemeanor or a felony, and was afterwards found beyond correction or dangerous to the community, could be sent back to the ordinary court and tried for the crime⁵⁵. That moves the record: a child under 16 has a juvenile court file rather than a criminal case file, and those files are ordinarily closed.

Witnesses

A witness of any age could testify, in a criminal case or a civil one. The test the Code set was understanding, not age: anyone able to understand what taking an oath meant could be a witness⁵⁶. The trial judge decided this one witness at a time, and children did testify. A husband and wife could each testify in any civil case, except about things that passed between them because they were married, and in criminal cases each could testify for or against the other⁵⁶.

Women as jurors

Jury service belonged to men through 1950: the statute in force on 1 January 1948 allowed only male citizens to serve. Women were admitted by an act of 1951, which took their service for granted and dealt with the practical consequences. When women were sworn on a jury in a felony case, it was neither unlawful nor a reason to throw out the verdict to keep the women jurors apart from the men outside the courtroom, so long as every juror stayed in the charge of a sworn officer⁵⁷.

People of color as witnesses and jurors

Until 1866 a person of color could testify only for or against another person of color. The Code reached anyone of African or Native American descent within three generations, enslaved or free, even where one ancestor in each generation had been white; and a person of mixed ancestry freed within the previous twelve months could not testify against a white person at all⁵⁸.

The bar fell on 26 May 1866. An act of that date gave people of color the right to make and enforce contracts, to sue and be sued, to take part in a lawsuit and give evidence, and to inherit, with the full and equal benefit of every law protecting person and property. It also forbade any heavier punishment than a white person would face for the same act⁵⁹.

Jury service was a separate question, and the same act kept people of color off juries in so many words: a proviso declared that nothing in it let them serve⁵⁹. The Code of 1858 had already limited service to white male citizens⁵³. Both bars fell within two years. The General Assembly gave Black men the vote and the right to hold office in March 1867. An act of 31 January 1868 removed what was left of the bar in so many words: there was to be no bar to holding office, or to sitting on juries, because of race or color, and every law conflicting with that was repealed. Black jurors were sitting in Nashville by the September 1868 term of the circuit court⁶⁰. Exclusion then continued by other means — the property requirement, the jury commissioners' free hand, and after 1900 the poll-tax voting rules — long after the statutory bar had gone.

Sources and Where to Verify

Constitutions

• North Carolina. Cession Act of 1789, § 8 (North Carolina law to continue in the ceded territory until altered). Digital images. Documenting the American South. https://docsouth.unc.edu/csr/index.php/document/csr25-0001 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Tennessee Constitution of 1834, art. II, § 28 (lands, town lots, bank stock, and slaves between twelve and fifty taxable; a tax on white polls to be laid as prescribed by law); art. IV, § 1 (free men of color exempt from the poll tax and from peacetime military duty). Transcript. Tennessee State Library and Archives. https://tsla.tnsosfiles.com/digital/teva/transcripts/33662.pdf (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Tennessee Constitution of 1870, art. IV, § 1 (poll tax and voting); art. XI, § 11 (homestead; wife's consent to convey); art. XI, § 14 (interracial marriage prohibited, the legislature to enforce the section; repealed by the amendment ratified in 1978). TNGenWeb. https://www.tngenweb.org/law/constitution1870.html (accessed 5 August 2026).

Codes and Compilations

• Digest of Election Laws of Tennessee. Lebanon, Tenn.: Democrat Print, 1908. The poll tax as a condition of voting, with the age limits and the proof required. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/digestofelection00tenn (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Digest of the Tax Laws of Tennessee. 1907. Prints the General Assessment Law of 1907, including the poll-tax section. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/digestoftaxlawso00tennrich (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Caruthers, R. L., and A. O. P. Nicholson, comps. A Compilation of the Statutes of Tennessee, of a General and Permanent Nature, from the Commencement of the Government to the Present Time, with References to Judicial Decisions, in Notes, to Which Is Appended a New Collection of Forms. Nashville: Printed at the Steam Press of James Smith, 1836. The North Carolina and Tennessee statutes in force in 1836, arranged by subject. This is the volume to read for the rule governing a death, a marriage, or a land division in the decades between the separation from North Carolina and the Code of 1858; the descent title is at pp. 247–51. Full view. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=emu.010002588555 (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Grayson, D. L. The Annotated Constitution and Code of the State of Tennessee, Embracing All Decisions of the Supreme Court Pertinent to the Constitution or Statutes from 1st to 94th Tennessee Reports, Inclusive. 2 vols. Chattanooga, Tenn.: Times Print, 1895. Carries the amendments to and repeals of the statutes in the Milliken and Vertrees code since 1884, so it bridges that volume and the twentieth-century compilations.
• Laws of the State of North-Carolina. [Potter's Revisal.] Revised by Henry Potter, J. L. Taylor, and Bartlett Yancey. 2 vols. Raleigh: Printed and sold by J. Gales, 1821. Prints the North Carolina acts Tennessee received at the cession, with marginal notes recording later amendments: the act of 1766 on the distribution of intestates' estates at ch. 79 (vol. 1, pp. 228–29), and the act of 1784 on the descent of real estates at ch. 204 (vol. 1, pp. 465–67), whose marginal note points to the North Carolina act of 1795, ch. 435, as the one that added daughters.
• Meigs, Return J., and William F. Cooper, comps. The Code of Tennessee. Nashville, Tenn.: E. G. Eastman and Company, State Printers, 1858. The volume in force from 1858, and the single most useful book for this period: its titles on registration, dower, descent, marriage, wills, administration, guardianship, revenue, juries, and witnesses carry most of the rules given in this guide. Full view. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112103368272 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Milliken, W. A., and John J. Vertrees, comps. The Code of Tennessee, Being a Compilation of the Statute Laws of the State of Tennessee, of a General Nature, in Force June 1, 1884. Nashville, Tenn.: Marshall & Bruce, Printers and Publishers, 1884. Prepared under a legislative resolution directing that each section carry a citation of the statutes it came from, so the note printed beside each section is that section's derivation; it is the quickest route to the source acts behind the Code of 1858. Full view. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112105474672 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Shannon, Robert T., comp. The Code of Tennessee. Nashville, Tenn.: 1896. Cited in the derivation lines printed in the modern code as "Shan.," and the source of the Shannon section numbers given in the notes above. Shannon also compiled a later annotated work, A Compilation of the Tennessee Statutes of a General Public Nature, in Force on the First Day of January, 1917; the two are different books, and the section numbers here belong to the earlier one. Catalog record for the 1917 compilation. HathiTrust. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100680912 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Tennessee Code Annotated. The derivation line printed after each current section is the route back to the Code of 1858, Shannon's, and the Code of 1932, and is the source of the 1858 section numbers cited above. Title 30 (administration of estates), title 31 (descent and distribution), title 32 (wills, including the Acts of 1941, ch. 125), title 34 (guardianship), and title 36 (domestic relations) carry the chains for the rules given here, including §§ 36-3-104 to 36-3-106 for the licensing act of 1937, §§ 36-3-504 and 36-3-505 for the Married Women's Emancipation Act and the entireties gap, and § 66-22-109 for the abolition of the privy examination. Public.Resource.Org edition. https://unicourt.github.io/cic-code-tn/transforms/tn/octn/r73/gov.tn.tca.title.36.html (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Thompson, Seymour D., and Thomas M. Steger, comps. A Compilation of the Statute Laws of the State of Tennessee. St. Louis: W. J. Gilbert, 1873. The revised code in which the act of 1870 against interracial marriage appears as §§ 2437a–2437b.
• Williams, Samuel C., ed. Annotated Code of Tennessee. 8 vols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1934. Commonly cited as Williams' Code; the replacement volumes issued in the 1940s carry the Michie imprint of Charlottesville. The code in force in the last decades covered here, and the volume whose section numbers are cited throughout: §§ 4917 and 11937–11953 (bastardy), 7635 (acknowledgment of a married person), 7638 (proof of a deed by a subscribing witness), 7719–7728 (homestead), 8089–8090 (wills executed on or before 15 February 1941), 8098 (curtesy), 8230–8232 (year's support), 8351–8355 (dower), 8358–8360 and 8389 (dissent and distribution), 8380–8391 (descent), 8408–8445 (marriage), 8460–8462 (married women) and 8463–8475 (guardianship), 9227–9243 (chancery sales), 9774–9778 (witnesses), 10006 (jurors), 10269–10309 (juvenile courts), 10370–10374 (removal of the disabilities of minority). The volume is a library and law-library holding.

Session Laws

• Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1865–66. Nashville: S. C. Mercer, Printer to the State, 1866. Ch. 40, defining "persons of color" and declaring their rights — contracts, evidence, and inheritance (§ 2), exclusion from juries (§ 4), and the validation of marriages contracted in slavery (§ 5). Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/actsstatetennes26unkngoog (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Acts of the State of Tennessee, Passed at the First Session of the Thirty-fifth General Assembly, for the Years 1867–68. Nashville, Tenn.: S. C. Mercer, Printer to the State, 1868. Ch. 31, removing every bar to holding office or sitting on juries on account of race or color, passed 31 January 1868. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/actsstatetennes32tenngoog (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Acts of the State of Tennessee, Passed by the First Session of the Thirty-sixth General Assembly, for the Years 1869–70. Nashville, Tenn.: Jones, Purvis & Co., Printers to the State, 1870. The acts of the session that sat from October 1869 to March 1870. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/actsstatetennes21unkngoog (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1870, 2d sess. Nashville, Tenn.: Printers to the State, 1870. The acts of the second session of the Thirty-sixth General Assembly, which sat in the summer of 1870. Ch. 39 is the act enforcing the constitutional ban on interracial marriage, so identified in the derivation printed beside Milliken and Vertrees, §§ 3291–3292, and reprinted as §§ 2437a–2437b of Thompson and Steger's compilation of 1873.
• Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1870–71. Nashville, Tenn.: Jones, Purvis & Co., Printers to the State, 1871. The acts of the third session, which opened on 5 December 1870. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/actsstatetennes23unkngoog (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1907. Nashville, Tenn.: Published by Authority, 1907. Ch. 602, the General Assessment Law, whose § 46 carries the poll tax and its age limits; the section is reprinted in Digest of the Tax Laws of Tennessee (1907), p. 206.
• Public Acts of the State of Tennessee Passed by the Fifty-seventh General Assembly, 1911. Nashville, Tenn.: McQuiddy Printing Company, 1911. Ch. 58, the Juvenile Court Act. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/publicactsstate02unkngoog (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Public Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1913. Nashville, Tenn.: McQuiddy Printing Company, 1913. Ch. 26, the Married Women's Emancipation Act, in force 1 January 1914. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/publicactsstate01tenngoog (accessed 5 August 2026). Also full view, HathiTrust, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007055969 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1919. Jackson, Tenn.: McCowat-Mercer, 1919. Ch. 48 (private examination of a married person abolished) and ch. 126 (estates by the entirety restored, in force 16 April 1919). Full view. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007055753 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Public Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1937. Nashville, Tenn.: Published by Authority, 1937. Ch. 81, p. 262, the licensing act: the minimum age to marry, the sworn application, the waiting period, the notice, and the parent's consent.
• Public Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1941. Nashville, Tenn.: Published by Authority, 1941. Ch. 125, p. 449, the Wills Act, in force for wills executed after 15 February 1941.
• Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1943. Nashville, Tenn.: Published by Authority, 1943. Chs. 37 and 38, repealing the poll tax, held unconstitutional the same year; and ch. 131, p. 358, amending the homestead exemption.
• Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1951. Nashville, Tenn.: Published by Authority, 1951. Ch. 71, admitting women to jury service.

Court Cases

• Alfred v. Bankers' & Shippers' Insurance Co. 167 Tenn. 278, 68 S.W.2d 941 (1934).
• Biggs v. Beeler. 180 Tenn. 198, 173 S.W.2d 144 (1943).
• Bohlen-Huse Coal & Ice Co. v. McDaniel. 148 Tenn. 628, 257 S.W. 848 (1923).
• Brewer v. Jacobs. 22 F. 217 (C.C.D. Tenn. 1884).
• Crockett v. Webb. 195 Tenn. 88, 257 S.W.2d 4 (1953). Quotes the dissent measure in full. Digital images. Caselaw Access Project. https://static.case.law/tenn/195/cases/0088-01.json (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Dunn v. Palermo. 522 S.W.2d 679 (Tenn. 1975). States the reception of the common law and the acts by which it came in. https://commonlaw.name/tennessee.html (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Gill v. McKinney. 140 Tenn. 549, 205 S.W. 416 (1918).
• Governor v. Rector and Ryland. 29 Tenn. (10 Hum.) 57 (1849).
• Hicks v. Sprankle. 149 Tenn. 310, 257 S.W. 1044 (1923).
• Keith v. Pack. 182 Tenn. 420, 187 S.W.2d 618 (1945). An underage marriage stands until a court sets it aside, and the court has a discretion whether to do so.
• Kellar v. Kellar. 142 Tenn. 524, 221 S.W. 189 (1920).
• Lillienkamp v. Rippetoe. 133 Tenn. 57 (1915).
• Mayo v. Bank of Gleason. 140 Tenn. 423, 205 S.W. 125 (1918).
• Pennegar v. State. 87 Tenn. 244, 10 S.W. 305 (1889).
• Schaffler v. Handwerker. 152 Tenn. 329, 278 S.W. 967 (1925).
• State v. Old. 95 Tenn. 723 (1896). Recites the poll-tax-payment acts of 1890 and 1891. Digital images. Caselaw Access Project. https://static.case.law/tenn/95/cases/0723-01.json (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Steadman v. State. 199 Tenn. 66, 282 S.W.2d 777 (1955). Quotes the 1951 act on women jurors. Digital images. Caselaw Access Project. https://static.case.law/tenn/199/cases/0066-01.json (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Tellico Bank & Trust Co. v. Loomis. 147 Tenn. 158, 246 S.W. 21 (1922).
• Tuck v. Payne. 159 Tenn. 192, 17 S.W.2d 8 (1929).

Secondary and Reference Works

• Buchanan, Sara Louise. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Tennessee. Bulletin No. 157-41 (revised). Washington: Government Printing Office, 1949. Law stated as of 1 January 1948; the best single cross-check for the last decades covered here, with section citations to Williams' 1934 code. Authorship is stated in the bulletin's general preface; the Tennessee title page names only the Women's Bureau. Digital images. FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-41-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Caselaw Access Project. Harvard Law School Library. Full text of the published Tennessee Reports, by volume and page. https://static.case.law/ (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Cason, Kevin. "Taxation in Tennessee, 1796–1899." Tennessee State Library & Archives. Compiled from the volumes of the Acts of Tennessee; what was taxed, from what date, and at what rate, with the poll ages and the wording used on the lists. https://sos-prod.tnsosgovfiles.com/s3fs-public/document/taxation.pdf (accessed 5 August 2026).
• FamilySearch Research Wiki. "Tennessee Law and Legislation." The digitized session-law list, and the passage from Scribner's Treatise on the Law of Dower tracing Tennessee dower to the North Carolina acts of 1715 and 1784. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Tennessee_Law_and_Legislation (accessed 5 August 2026).
• FamilySearch Research Wiki. "Tennessee Probate Records." What a Tennessee probate file may hold — wills, bonds, petitions, accounts, inventories, orders, decrees, distributions, and guardianship papers. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Tennessee_Probate_Records (accessed 5 August 2026).
• National Archives. "Freedmen's Bureau Marriage Records," reproducing a Nashville certificate of matrimony of May 1866. https://visit.archives.gov/whats-on/explore-exhibits/freedmens-bureau-marriage-records; and Washington, Reginald. "Sealing the Sacred Bonds of Holy Matrimony." Prologue 37 (Spring 2005). https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2005/spring/freedman-marriage-recs.html (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Scribner, Charles H. A Treatise on the Law of Dower. Vol. 1. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1864. Page 37 traces Tennessee dower to the North Carolina acts of 1715 and 1784. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/atreatiseonlawd00scrigoog (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts. "Women's History and Milestones in Tennessee Courts." Dates the Married Women's Emancipation Act to 1913 and the juror service act admitting women to 1951. https://www.tncourts.gov/sites/default/files/docs/womens_milestones_three.pdf (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Tennessee Department of Children's Services. "Juvenile Justice." Dates Tennessee's juvenile justice system to 1907, against the 1911 act the codification chains point to. https://www.tn.gov/dcs/program-areas/juvenile-justice.html (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Tennessee State Library and Archives. African American Legislators. Exhibit; the "Bills Filed" page transcribes the 1881 bill to repeal the interracial-marriage act of 1870, and the Sampson W. Keeble page quotes the Nashville Republican Banner of 3 September 1868 listing Black jurors for the coming circuit court term. https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/aale/billsfiled.htm; https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/aale/keeble.htm (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Tennessee State Library and Archives. "County and Municipal Records at the Library and Archives." The source for the custody of county records, and for the warning that deeds were not always recorded in the year written. https://sos.tn.gov/tsla/guides/county-and-municipal-records-at-the-library-archives (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Tennessee State Library and Archives. Tennessee State Prison Records, 1831–1992. Finding aid; identifies the Juvenile Court Act as ch. 58 of the Acts of 1911. https://sos-tn-gov-files.tnsosfiles.com/forms/TENNESSEE_STATE_PRISON_RECORDS_1831-1992.pdf (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Tennessee State Library and Archives. "Vital Records at the Library and Archives." The source for what a Tennessee marriage record contains: bound books not required until 1838, the county court clerk's ledger entry as the official record naming the couple, the officiant and sometimes the bondsman, and parents' names appearing from the 1880s in some counties and the mid-1920s in others. https://sos.tn.gov/library-archives/guides/vital-records-at-the-library-and-archives (accessed 5 August 2026).

Citations

1. North Carolina Cession Act of 1789, § 8; digital images, Documenting the American South (https://docsouth.unc.edu/csr/index.php/document/csr25-0001 : accessed 5 August 2026); Southwest Ordinance of 1790. The reception is stated in Dunn v. Palermo, 522 S.W.2d 679 (Tenn. 1975), citing the North Carolina acts of 1715, ch. 31, and 1778, ch. 5, and the Tennessee act of 1789, ch. 3 ↩
2. Sara Louise Buchanan, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Tennessee, Bulletin No. 157-41 rev. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1949), No. 1, giving majority as 21 for both sexes, as at common law, and stating the law as of 1 January 1948; digital images, FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-41-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf : accessed 5 August 2026). The age is the common-law age Tennessee received, on which see the reception authorities at note 1 ↩
3. Tuck v. Payne, 159 Tenn. 192, 17 S.W.2d 8 (1929); and see Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 2 ↩
4. Samuel C. Williams, ed., Annotated Code of Tennessee (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1934), §§ 9227–9243; the rule descends from The Code of Tennessee, comp. Return J. Meigs and William F. Cooper (Nashville, Tenn.: E. G. Eastman and Company, State Printers, 1858), § 3325, under which a minor over fourteen, and a married woman, answered the bill in person; full view of the 1858 code, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112103368272 : accessed 5 August 2026); and see Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 2 ↩ ↩ ↩
5. Williams' Code (1934), §§ 10370–10374; Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 2 ↩
6. Mayo v. Bank of Gleason, 140 Tenn. 423, 205 S.W. 125 (1918) ↩
7. Bohlen-Huse Coal & Ice Co. v. McDaniel, 148 Tenn. 628, 632, 257 S.W. 848 (1923). The ceremony requirement is statutory in origin: Code of 1858, §§ 2439–2441, from the Act of 1778, ch. 7, §§ 2–3, carried to Williams' Code (1934), §§ 8412–8414. On the license and the bond, Code of 1858, § 2441 (license under the hand of the clerk of the county court where the female resides, or where the marriage is solemnized), § 2442 (the clerk to issue the license to any one applying, unless he know that one of the parties is incapable of marriage, first taking bond to the State with sufficient surety in the sum of twelve hundred and fifty dollars, conditioned that there is no lawful cause to obstruct the marriage, on which any person aggrieved by the marriage may sue), and §§ 2443–2444 (endorsement and return of the license within six months, and the form of certificate) ↩ ↩ ↩
8. An officiant who knowingly joined persons not capable of marrying forfeited $500, Code of 1858, § 2446, from the Act of 1778, ch. 7, § 5, now Williams' Code (1934), § 8423; a marriage celebrated by license is not invalidated by a failure to comply with the licensing law, Williams' Code (1934), § 8424 ↩
9. Public Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1937, ch. 81, §§ 1–2, at p. 262; carried into the 1950 Code Supplement as §§ 8414.1 and 8414.2, and thence to T.C.A. §§ 36-3-104 and 36-3-105. The page is confirmed by Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 22, which cites the 1937 act at p. 262 for the under-16 annulment ↩
10. Public Acts, 1937, ch. 81, § 1; a marriage contracted in violation of the section is valid until set aside by a court, and the word "may" leaves the court a discretion whether to set it aside, Keith v. Pack, 182 Tenn. 420, 187 S.W.2d 618 (1945); and see Governor v. Rector and Ryland, 29 Tenn. (10 Hum.) 57, 61 (1849), on nonage as a ground for avoiding a marriage ↩
11. Public Acts, 1937, ch. 81, § 3, at p. 262; carried into the 1950 Code Supplement as § 8414.3, and thence, through the acts of 1959, ch. 124, § 2, and 1972, ch. 545, § 1, to T.C.A. § 36-3-106. The threshold in 1937 was minority, and majority was 21 throughout this period; the later amendments lowered it. For the earlier period, the marriage article of the Code of 1858 runs §§ 2436–2447 and requires no parent's consent to a minor's license, the security taken instead being the bond of § 2442 ↩
12. Prohibited degrees: Code of 1858, § 2436, from the Act of 1829, ch. 23, § 18; carried through Shannon's, § 4185, to Williams' Code (1934), § 8408, now T.C.A. § 36-3-101. Second marriage and the five-year absence: Code of 1858, § 2438, from the Act of 1829, ch. 23, § 16; Shannon's, § 4188; Williams' Code (1934), § 8411, now T.C.A. § 36-3-102. Annulment and decrees of nullity: Code of 1858, §§ 2465–2467; Williams' Code (1934), §§ 8443–8445 ↩
13. Pennegar v. State, 87 Tenn. 244, 255–56, 10 S.W. 305 (1889) ↩
14. Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1865–66 (Nashville: S. C. Mercer, Printer to the State, 1866), ch. 40, "An Act to define the term 'Persons of Color,' and to declare the rights of such persons," passed 26 May 1866, § 5; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsstatetennes26unkngoog : accessed 5 August 2026); imprint read from the title page. The act runs to six sections and contains no recording, licensing, or registration requirement, so no state record was generated by it ↩
15. Code of 1858, § 2437, and §§ 4924–4927: no white person could marry a person of African descent to the third generation inclusive (§ 4924); any such marriage was absolutely null and void (§ 4925); the parties, the issuing clerk, and the officiating minister or magistrate committed a misdemeanor (§ 4926) and forfeited $500 (§ 4927) ↩
16. Tenn. Const. of 1870, art. XI, § 14, banning the intermarriage of white persons with people of African descent to the third generation, and their living together as man and wife, and directing the legislature to enforce the section; TNGenWeb (https://www.tngenweb.org/law/constitution1870.html : accessed 5 August 2026); repealed by the amendment ratified in 1978. The enforcing act is the Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1870, 2d sess., ch. 39, so given in the derivation printed beside Milliken and Vertrees, Code of Tennessee (1884), §§ 3291–3292, whose § 3292 makes the offense a felony punishable by not less than one nor more than five years in the penitentiary, the court being free on the jury's recommendation to substitute a fine and imprisonment in the county jail. The two sections appear as §§ 2437a and 2437b of Thompson and Steger's revised code, so described in the repealing bill introduced on 12 January 1881 and rejected on 24 March, quoted in Tennessee State Library and Archives, African American Legislators: Bills Filed (https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/aale/billsfiled.htm : accessed 5 August 2026) ↩
17. Code of 1858, §§ 2427–2428, the descent rules for aliens, printed with the canons of descent at §§ 2420–2435 ↩
18. Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1919 (Jackson, Tenn.: McCowat-Mercer, 1919), ch. 48, § 2: the acknowledgment of a married person, when required by law, may be taken in the same form as if that person were single and without any examination separate and apart from the spouse; Shannon's Supplement, § 3747a3; Williams' Code (1934), § 7635; now T.C.A. § 66-22-109, whose derivation line supplies the chain. The requirement itself is Code of 1858, § 2076, under which the officer or court before whom a deed executed by husband and wife was acknowledged or proved examined the wife privately and apart from her husband, touching her voluntary execution of it and her knowledge of its contents and effect, and, being satisfied, added a certificate to the deed; § 2077 gives the form of that certificate, § 2079 requires it to be registered with the deed, and §§ 2080–2083 deal with omissions in it and their correction ↩ ↩ ↩
19. Public Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1913 (Nashville, Tenn.: McQuiddy Printing Company, 1913), ch. 26, § 1, in force 1 January 1914; amended by the Acts of 1919, ch. 126, §§ 1 and 3; carried through Shannon's Supplement, §§ 4249a4, 4249a4½, and 4249a6, and the Code of 1932, §§ 8460 and 8462, to T.C.A. § 36-3-504; the section is printed in full in Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 5. Imprint read from the title page; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/publicactsstate01tenngoog : accessed 5 August 2026). ↩
20. Tellico Bank & Trust Co. v. Loomis, 147 Tenn. 158, 162, 246 S.W. 21 (1922); and on the limits of the act, Lillienkamp v. Rippetoe, 133 Tenn. 57, 62 (1915) ↩
21. The act of 1913 was held to abolish tenancy by the entirety in Gill v. McKinney, 140 Tenn. 549, 205 S.W. 416 (1918), and Kellar v. Kellar, 142 Tenn. 524, 221 S.W. 189 (1920); the estate was restored by the Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1919, ch. 126, § 2, in force 16 April 1919, codified as Code of 1932 and Williams' Code (1934), § 8461, now T.C.A. § 36-3-505. The resulting gap from 1 January 1914 to 16 April 1919, and its effect on deeds executed in that period, is set out in the compiler's note to T.C.A. § 36-3-505 and in Hicks v. Sprankle, 149 Tenn. 310, 257 S.W. 1044 (1923); and see Alfred v. Bankers' & Shippers' Insurance Co., 167 Tenn. 278, 283, 68 S.W.2d 941 (1934) ↩
22. Schaffler v. Handwerker, 152 Tenn. 329, 333, 336, 278 S.W. 967 (1925); Williams' Code (1934), § 8098, under which a wife could not defeat her husband's curtesy by her will, and § 8461, preserving curtesy consummate; Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, Nos. 14–15 ↩ ↩
23. Code of 1858, § 2398: a widow was entitled to dower in one-third part of all the lands of which her husband died seized and possessed, or of which he was equitable owner; and see Charles H. Scribner, A Treatise on the Law of Dower, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1864), 37, tracing the rule to the North Carolina acts of 1715 and 1784; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/atreatiseonlawd00scrigoog : accessed 5 August 2026) ↩
24. Code of 1858, § 2400 (to her own use for the term of her natural life), § 2401 (the dwelling house the husband was accustomed to occupy included in the third), and § 2403 (a third of the entire estate, not of each tract); a conveyance made to defeat dower was void, § 2406; carried forward as Williams' Code (1934), §§ 8351–8355; Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 15 ↩
25. Tenn. Const. of 1870, art. XI, § 11; Williams' Code (1934), § 7719, as amended by the Acts of 1943, ch. 131, p. 358, and § 7728 (the homestead passing to the widow for life and remaining exempt during the minority of the children occupying it); Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 15 ↩ ↩
26. Proof for registration was made by the subscribing witnesses, and no Tennessee statute set an age for them: Code of 1858, § 2048, from the Acts of 1835–36, ch. 53, §§ 5–6, and 1837–38, ch. 150, § 1; Shannon's, § 3723; Williams' Code (1934), § 7638, now T.C.A. § 66-23-102. The governing test was the general one for witnesses, Code of 1858, § 3807, at note 56 below ↩
27. Laws of North Carolina, 1784, ch. 22 in the session numbering, printed as ch. 204 in Laws of the State of North-Carolina [Potter's Revisal] (Raleigh: Printed and sold by J. Gales, 1821), vol. 1, pp. 465–67, headed "An act to regulate the descent of real estates, to do away entails, to make provision for widows, and to prevent frauds in the execution of last wills and testaments"; received in Tennessee under the Cession Act of 1789. Section 2 directs that the estate descend to all the sons, to be equally divided amongst them, and for want of sons to all the daughters, to be divided amongst them equally, share and share alike, as tenants in common in severalty, subject to an allowance for lands already settled on a child; a proviso carries the same order to the issue of a child who died in the intestate's lifetime, and § 3 applies it to collaterals. That the act was still the law of Tennessee in the 1830s is shown by R. L. Caruthers and A. O. P. Nicholson, A Compilation of the Statutes of Tennessee, of a General and Permanent Nature (Nashville: Printed at the Steam Press of James Smith, 1836), 247–48, which prints the section under the title "Descents" and whose preface states that the volume contains the statutes of North Carolina and Tennessee then in force; full view, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=emu.010002588555&seq=259 : accessed 11 August 2026). Potter's marginal note to § 2 records the addition of daughters by the North Carolina act of 1795, ch. 435 in his continuous numbering — an act passed after the cession of 1789, which therefore did not reach Tennessee of its own force ↩
28. Code of 1858, § 2420: the land of an intestate owner was inherited by all his sons and daughters, divided among them equally, with the lineal descendants of a child who died in his lifetime representing their parent; full view, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112103368272&seq=513 : accessed 11 August 2026). The change from the sons-first rule was made by the Code itself. Its § 40 designates the compilation the "Code of Tennessee," and § 41 repeals all public and general acts passed before the session that enacted it, the subjects whereof are revised in the Code. The derivation printed in the margin beside the section in Milliken and Vertrees, Code of Tennessee (1884), § 3268, reads "1784, ch. 22. (2420)" — the originating North Carolina act and the Code section, with no Tennessee act between them; full view, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112105474672&seq=738 : accessed 11 August 2026). Related rules: § 2421 (remoter descendants and collaterals, same derivation), § 2423 (estate of an illegitimate intestate), § 2424 (posthumous child), and §§ 2431–2435 (advancements), whose derivation runs back through the acts of 1845–6, ch. 210, 1827, ch. 14, 1784, ch. 22, and 1766, ch. 3 ↩ ↩
29. Code of 1858, § 2422: where the intestate left no heirs at law capable of inheriting the real estate, it was inherited by the husband or wife in fee simple; carried forward as Williams' Code (1934), §§ 8380, 8382; Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 15. Milliken and Vertrees, Code of Tennessee (1884), § 3272, derives this rule from the act of 1849–50, ch. 54, so it belongs to the second half of the period ↩
30. Code of 1858, § 2429, subsecs. 1–2: the surplus personal estate went to the widow and children, or the descendants of children representing them, equally, the widow taking a child's share; and to the widow altogether if there were no children nor descendants of children. The same rule stood at the close of the period, worded for a surviving spouse of either sex, as Williams' Code (1934), § 8389, subsecs. 1–2; digested in Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 15. The rule Tennessee received is the act of 1766, printed as ch. 79 in Laws of the State of North-Carolina [Potter's Revisal] (Raleigh: Printed and sold by J. Gales, 1821), vol. 1, pp. 228–29: one-third of the surplus to the wife of the intestate and all the rest by equal portions among the children, with a half to her and the remainder to the next of kin where no child survived. Potter's marginal note records that the half was cut to one-third by the act of 1784, ch. 204 in his continuous numbering and ch. 22 in the session numbering. The Tennessee chain then runs through the acts of 1827, ch. 14, and 1845–6, ch. 210, to the form the Code of 1858 set down; those two acts are printed in the session volumes for their years ↩ ↩
31. Williams' Code (1934), §§ 8358–8360, quoted in Crockett v. Webb, 195 Tenn. 88, 257 S.W.2d 4 (1953); digital images, Caselaw Access Project (https://static.case.law/tenn/195/cases/0088-01.json : accessed 5 August 2026). The measure belongs to the spouse who dissents from a will, not to intestacy, and by the close of the period it ran to a surviving husband as well as to a widow; Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 17 ↩
32. Williams' Code (1934), § 8230 (the widow's possession and management before administration is granted), § 8231 (three freeholders appointed on the application of a widow, or of one who dissents from the will, to set apart a year's support), and § 8232 (the assets so set apart become her absolute property, free of the estate's debts); Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 16 ↩
33. Code of 1858, § 2404: a widow might dissent from her husband's will in open court within one year after the probate of the will, and in that case was endowed as if he had died intestate; § 2405 required the executor to disclose the state of the estate to her on application; carried forward, and extended to a surviving husband, as Williams' Code (1934), §§ 8358–8359; Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 17 ↩
34. Williams' Code (1934), §§ 8463, 8465, from the Acts of 1859–60, ch. 99, §§ 1–2, and 1899, ch. 177, § 1; Shannon's, §§ 4256–4257; Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 25 ↩
35. Williams' Code (1934), §§ 8474–8475; Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 26 ↩
36. Code of 1858, § 2491 (county court may appoint a special guardian where a minor is entitled to an estate; the father, and if he be dead the mother, preferred unless the minor's interest requires another), § 2490 (a wife abandoned without lawful cause, or granted a divorce, may be appointed guardian of her children on giving bond), § 2489 (an executor or administrator holding a minor's estate not to be appointed guardian until he has settled his accounts), and § 2492 (a father, whether of full age or himself under 21, may dispose of the custody and tuition of a legitimate child under 21 by deed or by will). The guardianship title of the Code of 1858 contains no provision by which a minor of any age chose or nominated a guardian, and none appears among the guardianship sections of Williams' Code digested by the Women's Bureau at Nos. 25–26 ↩ ↩
37. Williams' Code (1934), §§ 8383, 8391; the earlier rule is Code of 1858, § 2423 (the real and personal estate of an illegitimate intestate dying without child, husband, or wife goes to the mother, and failing her equally to his brothers and sisters by his mother); Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 29 ↩
38. Code of 1858, §§ 3640–3642, carried to Milliken and Vertrees, Code of Tennessee (1884), §§ 4385–4387: the application to legitimate a child not born in lawful wedlock is made by petition in writing, signed by the person wishing to legitimate the child and setting forth the reasons; the court, if satisfied with the reasons, may by order embodying the petition in full and entered upon the minutes declare the child legitimate; and the effect is to create the relation of parent and child between the petitioner and the person legitimated, as if the latter had been born to the former in lawful wedlock. The name of the person legitimated could be changed by a request inserted in the same petition, § 3646 ↩
39. Code of 1858, § 2425: a child of color could not inherit the estate of its mother's husband unless the mother or the husband was a person of color; the restriction ended with the Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1865–66, ch. 40, § 2, passed 26 May 1866, giving persons of color the right to inherit ↩
40. Williams' Code (1934), § 4917 (the father liable to proceedings to indemnify the county) and § 11951 (no provision unless the child is, or is likely to become, a county charge), with §§ 11949–11950 and 11953 on the order of maintenance and its enforcement; Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 28 ↩
41. Public Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1941, ch. 125, p. 449, the Wills Act: § 1 (a person means a man or a woman, single or married), § 2 (age 18), § 3 (any person competent as a witness generally may attest; an interested witness forfeits only the excess over an intestate share), § 4 (two witnesses), § 5 (holographic; handwriting proved by two witnesses), § 6 (nuncupative), and § 8 (the act does not reach wills executed on or before 15 February 1941); carried into the 1950 Code Supplement as §§ 8098.1–8098.8, now T.C.A. §§ 32-1-101 to 32-1-108; §§ 2 and 3 are digested in Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 14 ↩ ↩ ↩
42. The common law Tennessee received, on which see the reception authorities at note 1: a will of land required full age, and a will of goods could be made by a male of fourteen or a female of twelve. Article I of the wills title of the Code of 1858 runs §§ 2162–2168 — the requisites of a will of lands, of a holographic will, what a devise conveys, nuncupative wills and their proof, revocation, and a married woman's power to make a will — and sets no age, so the common-law ages stood until the Wills Act of 1941 fixed 18 for both kinds of property ↩
43. Attested wills of land: Code of 1858, § 2162, from the North Carolina act of 1784 (Apr.), ch. 22, § 11; Shannon's, § 3895; Williams' Code (1934), § 8089, preserved as T.C.A. § 32-1-109. Holographic wills: Code of 1858, § 2163, from the North Carolina act of 1784 (Oct.), ch. 10, § 5; Shannon's, § 3896; Williams' Code (1934), § 8090, preserved as T.C.A. § 32-1-110. Nuncupative wills: Code of 1858, §§ 2165–2167. That a will of goods required no attesting witness is settled by the decisions printed under T.C.A. § 32-1-109 ↩ ↩
44. Code of 1858, § 2221 (oath administered before the letters issue) and § 2222 (bond with two or more sufficient sureties in a penalty of double the value of the estate, payable to the State); §§ 2223–2224 give the form. The administration title fixes no age for an executor, executrix, or administrator, and none appears in the later code; the qualification was the oath and the bond ↩
45. Code of 1858, § 538, listing the sources of state revenue as taxes on white polls, on property, on sales of land, slaves, and merchandise, on privileges, on litigation, and fines and forfeitures ↩
46. Kevin Cason, "Taxation in Tennessee, 1796–1899" (Tennessee State Library & Archives), 1–3, compiled from the volumes of the Acts of Tennessee: the poll tax paid by each adult free male between 21 and 50; from 1797 a free poll taxed at 12½ cents, a hundred acres of land at the same figure, a town lot at 25 cents, and an enslaved person at 25 cents; land taxed at a uniform amount per acre until 1834 and by value afterwards; enslaved people entered on the lists as a black poll as against a white poll; and the lists combining the two into a single taxable poll after the Civil War (https://sos-prod.tnsosgovfiles.com/s3fs-public/document/taxation.pdf : accessed 5 August 2026). The rates and dates are drawn there from the revenue acts printed in the Acts of Tennessee for the years given ↩ ↩ ↩
47. Tennessee Constitution of 1834, art. II, § 28 (lands, town lots, bank stock, and slaves between the ages of twelve and fifty taxable; a tax on white polls to be laid as prescribed by law) and art. IV, § 1 (free men of color exempt from military duty in peacetime and from the poll tax); transcript, Tennessee State Library and Archives (https://tsla.tnsosfiles.com/digital/teva/transcripts/33662.pdf : accessed 5 August 2026); and see Cason, "Taxation in Tennessee," 3, where the charts carry a free poll from 1797 and a white poll tax from 1835–36 ↩
48. Code of 1858, § 539 (every white male inhabitant between 21 and 50 taxable, excepting men wounded in the military service, the deaf, dumb, blind, those incapable of labor, ministers of the gospel, and persons exempt by particular laws) and § 540 (petition to the county court for the incapacity exemption, declared of record, a certified copy authorizing the collector to omit him) ↩
49. Tenn. Const. of 1834, art. II, § 28; Code of 1858, § 541, subsec. 8 (all slaves taxable as property), and § 542, subsec. 7 (slaves under twelve and over fifty exempt) ↩
50. General Assessment Law, Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1907, ch. 602, § 46, effective 15 April 1907, printed in Digest of the Tax Laws of Tennessee (1907), p. 206; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoftaxlawso00tennrich : accessed 5 August 2026). The band of 21 to 50 runs back through the earlier revenue acts; Cason, "Taxation in Tennessee," 1 ↩ ↩
51. Tenn. Const. of 1870, art. IV, § 1. The duty of proof and the age cut-offs are traced in State v. Old, 95 Tenn. 723 (1896); digital images, Caselaw Access Project (https://static.case.law/tenn/95/cases/0723-01.json : accessed 5 August 2026); and in Digest of Election Laws of Tennessee (1908), pp. 10–11; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestofelection00tenn : accessed 5 August 2026) ↩
52. Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1943, chs. 37 and 38, held unconstitutional in Biggs v. Beeler, 180 Tenn. 198, 173 S.W.2d 144 (1943); the poll-tax provisions were removed by the constitutional convention of 1953; Cason, "Taxation in Tennessee," 1 ↩
53. Code of 1858, § 4002: every white male citizen who was a freeholder or householder and twenty-one years of age was qualified to act as a grand or petit juror unless otherwise incompetent under the Code. Disqualifications: § 4003 (interest, or kinship within the sixth degree) and § 4004 (conviction of certain infamous offences, unsound mind, loss of hearing or sight, habitual drunkenness). Carried through Shannon's, §§ 5813–5819, to Williams' Code (1934), §§ 10006, 10007, 10009–10012, and 10014; and see Brewer v. Jacobs, 22 F. 217 (C.C.D. Tenn. 1884). Trial by jury is guaranteed by the Tennessee Constitution of 1796, art. XI, § 6, and by art. I, § 6 of the constitutions of 1834 and 1870, each leaving the qualifications of jurors to the General Assembly; for the years before the Code, the jury act in force is printed in the session volume for its year ↩ ↩ ↩
54. The common law Tennessee received, on which see the reception authorities at note 1: a child under seven could not commit a crime, a child between seven and fourteen was presumed unable to, and a person of fourteen bore full responsibility. These ages stood in Tennessee until the Juvenile Court Act of 1911 moved children under sixteen to a separate jurisdiction; see note 55 ↩
55. Public Acts of the State of Tennessee Passed by the Fifty-seventh General Assembly, 1911 (Nashville, Tenn.: McQuiddy Printing Company, 1911), ch. 58 (Senate Bill No. 619), "An Act to define and regulate the treatment and control of dependent, neglected, and delinquent children," § 1 (the act applies only to children sixteen years of age or under, and a delinquent child is any child under sixteen who violates any law of the State or any city or town ordinance, or is incorrigible, or is a persistent truant), § 2 (the county judge or chairman of the county court to have original, exclusive jurisdiction, with a jury on the demand of any person interested), and the sections making a child adjudged delinquent subject to the court to the age of twenty-one and allowing a child afterwards found incorrigible and past reformation to be remanded to the proper court and tried for the crime. Jurisdiction once acquired continued until the child's majority. Digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/publicactsstate02unkngoog : accessed 5 August 2026). Codified at Williams' Code (1934), §§ 10269–10309, and amended by Public Acts, 1913, ch. 22 ↩
56. Code of 1858, § 3807: a person of sufficient capacity to understand the obligation of an oath is competent to be a witness; §§ 3810–3811 deal with nominal parties and the judge. On spouses, Williams' Code (1934), §§ 9774, 9777–9778 ↩ ↩
57. Williams' Code (1934), § 10006, still in force on 1 January 1948, under which only male citizens were eligible; Buchanan, Legal Status of Women: Tennessee, No. 32. Women were admitted by the Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1951, ch. 71, a later section of which is quoted in full in Steadman v. State, 199 Tenn. 66, 282 S.W.2d 777 (1955); digital images, Caselaw Access Project (https://static.case.law/tenn/199/cases/0066-01.json : accessed 5 August 2026). Section 4 of the act amended the jury-qualification sections, per the citation chain printed at former T.C.A. §§ 22-1-101 to 22-1-107 ↩
58. Code of 1858, § 3808 (a person of African or Native American descent to the third generation inclusive, enslaved or free, incapable of being a witness except for or against another such person) and § 3809 (a person of mixed ancestry liberated within the previous twelve months not admitted as a witness against a white person) ↩
59. Acts of the State of Tennessee, 1865–66, ch. 40, § 2 (contracts, suing and being sued, being parties and giving evidence, inheriting, equal benefit of the laws, and no greater punishment than for a white person) and § 4, whose proviso declares that nothing in the act admits persons of color to serve on the jury; § 1 defines the term and § 3 extends the laws for the blind, deaf and dumb, lunatics, paupers, and apprentices ↩ ↩
60. Acts of the State of Tennessee, Passed at the First Session of the Thirty-fifth General Assembly, for the Years 1867–68 (Nashville, Tenn.: S. C. Mercer, Printer to the State, 1868), ch. 31, "An Act to Remove all Disabilities for Holding Office, and Sitting on Juries, on account of race or color," passed 31 January 1868: § 1 enacts that from and after the passage of the act there shall be no disqualification for holding office, or sitting on juries, on account of race or color, and § 2 repeals all laws or parts of laws in conflict with it and gives the act immediate effect. Digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsstatetennes32tenngoog : accessed 5 August 2026). The derivation note printed at former T.C.A. §§ 22-1-101 to 22-1-107 records the Code of 1858 jury sections as amended by this act, which followed the act of March 1867 admitting Black men to the franchise and to office. For Black men serving on a Nashville jury by the September 1868 term, see the Nashville Republican Banner, 3 September 1868, quoted in Tennessee State Library and Archives, African American Legislators (https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/aale/keeble.htm : accessed 5 August 2026) ↩

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.