Utah Historical Law Guide

Contents

Legal Ages at a Glance

General Principles

An English legal system adopted late

Utah's law is English common law — judge-made law handed down through court decisions rather than written by a legislature. The first state code said so plainly. English common law was the rule every Utah court followed, except where it clashed with the federal or state constitution or with a statute¹. The rule a court follows in this way is the law a judge applies when no statute answers the question. That section took effect 1 January 1898.

The territorial decades, 1850 to 1897, worked differently. No territorial statute ever adopted the common law; the courts applied it anyway, on two grounds. The seventeenth section of the federal organic act creating the Territory was read as extending the common law here². The judges held that it governed so far as it suited Utah's circumstances and its form of government³. Their reasoning was that the settlers had accepted the rules that fit their situation⁴. Not every rule survived that test: the courts refused to apply the English rule requiring a man to keep his stock within his own land, as unsuited to the sparsely settled west⁵.

Congress created the Territory by the Organic Act of 9 September 1850⁶, and the first session laws date from 1851 and 1852. No Utah statute is older than that. For the settlement years from 1847 to 1850, look to church and county records rather than to statute law.

The Territory ran to statehood on 4 January 1896, but territorial statutes stayed in force until the first state code took effect on 1 January 1898, so territorial law in this guide means the law to the end of 1897. For a question arising between 1850 and 1897, look first for the territorial statute. Where none existed, the common law applied unless it did not fit the country.

A probate court is a county court whose ordinary business is wills, estates, and guardianships. Territorial Utah gave its probate courts civil and criminal jurisdiction as well, which the federal Poland Act of 1874 returned to the district courts⁷. Probate, estate, and guardianship files sit with the county probate court to 1896 and with the district court after.

A separate property system

The region was Mexican until the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, whose ratifications were exchanged at Querétaro on 30 May 1848 and which was proclaimed on 4 July 1848⁸. Utah built its property law from Anglo-American materials.

Utah was a separate property state throughout the period. Each spouse owned what was theirs. The rules that follow — a wife's separate estate, her statutory third, her own signature on her own deed — all rest on that footing.

Legal Age of Adulthood

Twenty-one for men and eighteen for women

Utah set full legal age at 21 for males and 18 for females, and made one further provision in the same sentence: every minor reached majority by marriage, at whatever age⁹. Minority means the period below full legal age. The same rule stood in the code in force in the 1940s¹⁰.

The split is old, and the Utah Supreme Court later described the age of 18 for women as having stood for close to a century¹¹. It ended after this period, when the United States Supreme Court held it unconstitutional in 1975 and the legislature set 18 for both sexes¹².

For research, the practical point is that a Utah woman came of age three years before her brother. A guardianship that closes on a daughter's eighteenth birthday and a son's twenty-first is following the statute, not an irregularity.

What a minor could do

A minor could own property outright. The limits were on contracting and on disposing of what they owned. A minor was bound for necessaries, meaning food, clothing, shelter, and the like. Other contracts bound him too, unless he disaffirmed them. To disaffirm is to undo. He had to do it before majority, or within a reasonable time after, and hand back whatever money or property he still held¹³. By the twentieth-century code a minor who misrepresented his age, or who was engaged in business as an adult, was held to the bargain¹⁴.

Marriage

Who was old enough to marry

Before 1888 no Utah statute set an age. The common law governed, so a boy could marry at 14 and a girl at 12, and a marriage in those years needed nothing but the consent of two people old enough to give it¹⁵.

The Act Regulating Marriage, approved 8 March 1888, wrote those same two ages into the statute book. A marriage was prohibited and void where at the time of the marriage the male was under 14 or the female under 12¹⁶.

The first state code raised the line. From 1 January 1898 a marriage was void where the male was under 16 or the female under 14¹⁷, and those two figures lasted until the late 1990s.

A second rule ran alongside the first from 1888, and it is easy to mistake for the parental consent rule below. It was not. It gave a court a power to undo a marriage, not a clerk a reason to refuse a license. A court with general equity powers could declare such a marriage void. Two things had to be true: the male was under 16 or the female under 14 at the time, and the marriage was made without the consent of a parent, guardian, or other person having proper charge of them¹⁸. The marriage stood if the couple went on living together after reaching those ages. So in the decade after 1888 a boy of 15 who married without leave was married until a court said otherwise, while a boy of 13 was not married at all. After 1898 the rule mattered much less, because 16 and 14 had become the ages below which a marriage was void outright.

Parental consent was a separate and higher line, and it worked through the license. Those ages were set by the 1888 act and never moved. The rule caught a male under 21 or a female under 18 where neither had married before. For them the clerk could issue no license without the consent of a father, mother, or guardian. A parent could give that consent in person, or certify it in writing over a signature. A written consent needed two or more subscribing witnesses, and one of them had to swear to it¹⁹²⁰. The same rule stood in the revision of 1933 and in the code in force in the 1940s²¹. Because the consent was certified to the clerk over the parent's own signature, a parent is named in the papers the clerk took.

A license and a ceremony

From the marriage act onward a valid Utah marriage required both a license and a ceremony. The license issued from the county clerk of the county where the woman resided, though a woman of full age or a widow could apply to any county clerk²². Four kinds of people could perform the ceremony: ministers or priests in regular communion with a religious society, justices of the peace, mayors of cities, and district and supreme court judges²³. The arrangement differed while Utah was still a territory: from 1888 to 1897 the license came from the clerk of the probate court, and probate judges could perform the ceremony. The list of officiants shifted again at the revisions of 1898 and 1933²⁴. The application is the richest marriage document Utah law produced. It had to give:

• both parties' full names and where they lived;
• each one's date and place of birth, down to the town, county, and state or country;
• the names of both sets of parents, with each mother's maiden name;
• where those parents were born; and
• the race or nationality of each parent²⁵.

The officiant returned the license within thirty days, with a certificate giving the date, the place, and two or more witnesses. The clerk filed it, recorded it in a book indexed under the parties' names, and sent a transcript to the state registrar of vital statistics²⁶.

A marriage was void where it was not solemnized by an authorized person, with one saving rule: a marriage performed before someone who professed to have authority stood, where the couple or either of them believed he had it²⁷.

A marriage solemnized in another country, state, or territory and valid where it was solemnized was valid in Utah²⁸.

Common-law marriage and the date it ended

A common-law marriage is one the parties make by agreement and by living together as husband and wife, with no license and no ceremony. Utah recognized it from 1850 to 1888, and then stopped. The date of the change is 1888, and it matters to anyone who cannot find a marriage record.

Before the marriage act of 1888 there was no Utah statute on the subject. A marriage could be contracted by the mutual consent of parties capable of contracting, without ceremony or formality²⁹. An early Utah couple living together as husband and wife may therefore have been validly married with no license and no officiant, so no civil document exists for them. A church record often will. The ordinance incorporating the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is carried in the compilation of 1876. It gave the church power to solemnize marriage. It also required every fully organized branch or stake to keep a registry of marriages, births, and deaths, open to its members³⁰.

The 1888 act ended it. From that year a marriage not solemnized by an authorized person was void, and the state code carried the same rule forward. The Utah Supreme Court applied it squarely in 1946, and in 1994 the court said plainly that before 1987 Utah never recognized common-law marriage and that such marriages were expressly prohibited³¹. The legislature created a limited replacement in 1987, by allowing a court to recognize an unsolemnized relationship as a marriage.

For research the rule divides neatly. A couple who began living together before 1888 may be validly married with nothing on file. A couple who began after 1888 needed a license and an officiant, so if no marriage record exists, either the record is lost, the couple married in another state, or they were not married in the eyes of Utah law. The saving rule in the previous section is worth checking first: a marriage performed by someone the couple believed had authority was good even if he did not.

Plural marriage

Plural marriage — one man married to more than one living wife — was practiced openly in Utah from 1852. It was announced publicly at a special conference in Salt Lake City on 29 August 1852, in a discourse delivered by the apostle Orson Pratt under Brigham Young's direction³².

A sequence of federal statutes then made it criminal and stripped its legal effects. The Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1 July 1862 made bigamy a felony in the territories and capped the property a church could hold³³. The Poland Act of 1874 moved prosecutions into the federal district courts³⁴. The Edmunds Act of 22 March 1882 created the offense of unlawful cohabitation, meaning living with more than one woman as wives. It was far easier to prove than a marriage. The act's seventh section legitimated the children of such marriages born before 1 January 1883³⁵. The Edmunds-Tucker Act of 3 March 1887 dissolved the corporation of the church, ended woman suffrage in the territory, and annulled Utah's inheritance statute for children born outside marriage³⁶.

The Manifesto of 1890 announced the end of new church-sanctioned plural marriages. The federal enabling act of 1894 made statehood conditional on a permanent ban. The Constitution carries that ban as an ordinance which cannot be revoked without the consent of the United States. It guarantees religious toleration and forever prohibits polygamous or plural marriages³⁷.

Two consequences for research. A plural marriage generated no civil marriage record, because no license could issue for it. What it did generate, from 1882 onward, is a criminal file — an unlawful cohabitation prosecution in the federal district court, which names the man and commonly the women. The children are reached by the legitimation rules under Inheritance, below.

Marriage across the color line

The law barred a white person from marrying a Black person, and a white person from marrying a person of Asian descent. Both marriages were prohibited and declared void, and the two racial categories sat in the same statutory list as bigamous marriage and marriage below 16 and 14³⁸. The statute used the racial labels of its own day, which are not repeated here. The same section barred marriage to a person who was an idiot or lunatic, who had uncured syphilis or gonorrhea, or who had chronic epileptic fits. The epilepsy bar did not reach a woman over 45. The section also stopped a divorced person from marrying anyone but the former spouse until the decree became absolute³⁹. The ban entered Utah law by territorial act in 1888 and was carried into the state code unchanged⁴⁰, and through the revision of 1933 those two were the only racial categories in the list⁴¹. A single 1939 act reworked the whole list. It widened the racial bar to reach people of Pacific Islander descent, and people of one-half, one-quarter, and one-eighth Black ancestry. It also lifted the epilepsy bar for anyone who had been sterilized⁴². The law stood in that form through the 1940s⁴³. The ban fell on 14 May 1963, when the legislature struck the two racial subsections from the list⁴⁴.

Property Ownership

Which men could own land

Utah put no special qualification on a man who wanted to buy or sell land. The territorial conveyancing act of 1874 asked only four things of a deed:

• that the person the interest passed from sign it;
• that he be of lawful age;
• that one or more credible witnesses sign; and
• that it be acknowledged or proved, and recorded⁴⁵.

Nothing in the act turned on property held, taxes paid, office, or church membership.

Territorial Utah did recognize bound servitude in the 1850s, under two acts of the same session. Both acts ran through the probate court, so both left records there.

The Act in Relation to Service, approved 4 February 1852, let a person coming to the Territory with servants bound to him by contract keep their service, provided he filed written evidence of it in the probate court⁴⁶. A servant could be transferred to another master only with the probate court's approval and the servant's own consent given in the master's absence, and a record was kept in the court's office⁴⁷.

The Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners passed on 31 January 1852. It required any white person holding an Indian prisoner, child, or woman to bring that person before the selectmen or probate judge. If the court found the holder suitable to raise and educate them, it bound the person out by indenture for up to twenty years. The name was written into the indenture⁴⁸.

Congress abolished slavery in the territories by the act of 19 June 1862, ending both⁴⁹.

Women and land ownership

Before 1872 the common law of coverture governed, and under it a wife had no separate legal standing in her property: what she brought to the marriage and what she earned during it fell under her husband's control. Utah changed that early. The territorial legislature settled it in one short act approved 16 February 1872. Whatever either spouse owned going into the marriage stayed theirs, and so did anything either one later bought, was given, or inherited — along with any rent or income it earned. Each could keep, manage, sell, or give that property away freely, and marriage placed no limit on the right. Either could sue or be sued. And dower was abolished in the Territory⁵⁰.

The state code restated it. Whatever a woman owned before marriage stayed hers, and so did anything she later came to by purchase, gift, grant, inheritance, or devise. None of it could be taken for her husband's debts. She could sell it, or leave it by will, exactly as if she were unmarried⁵¹. Statehood put the same rule in the Constitution. Husband and wife could convey to each other directly, as valid as between any two other people⁵². A wife took the wages of her own labor, sued for them in her own name, and prosecuted and defended actions to protect her property as if unmarried⁵³.

The conveyancing act of 1874 spelled out the mechanics. A married woman could convey her own real estate, or any interest in it, by a deed executed, acknowledged, and certified in the same manner as for anyone else⁵⁴. So from 1874 a married Utah woman signed her own deed in her own right, and a single or widowed woman — a feme sole, "woman alone" — did the same.

The widow's third and when a wife had to sign

Utah gave the surviving wife a fee-simple share instead of dower. Dower is a widow's life estate — the use of land for her lifetime, not ownership of it — in a share of her husband's land, and curtesy is the widower's counterpart. From 1898 Utah had neither: the code stated flatly that there was neither dower nor curtesy in the state⁵⁵, and that section carried forward unchanged⁵⁶. The abolition of curtesy left the two spouses in different positions, which is worth holding on to. A widow took a fee-simple third of her husband's land on top of her share of the estate; a widower had no equivalent claim on his wife's land and took only under the succession scale⁵⁷.

What replaced dower reaches just as far. If she outlived him, a widow took one-third of her husband's land in fee simple — as full owner, not for life only. That third covered every parcel he had held at any point during the marriage, whether he owned it outright or held an enforceable claim to it, unless she had already given up her rights in it⁵⁸. Any homestead set aside to her was deducted from the third⁵⁹.

The same section ran on into the twentieth century⁶⁰. Those last words are the ones that matter in the deed books. Because the third attached to every parcel the husband held at any time during the marriage, a buyer took subject to it unless the wife relinquished her rights, and she relinquished by joining in the deed. A husband's sole deed passed the land burdened by her third; the same deed signed by both passed it clear. A wife's signature on a Utah deed is a release of her statutory third, not a formality. One proviso limits the rule: she took nothing in an estate the husband conveyed at a time when she was not and never had been a resident of the territory or state⁶¹.

Utah's treatment changed several times before settling, so the period a deed falls in decides the rule.

The 1872 act abolished dower outright⁶². The Edmunds-Tucker Act of 3 March 1887 restored it by federal statute, endowing the widow of a third part of the lands⁶³. The 1898 revision replaced it with the fee-simple third⁶⁴.

One point about the middle stretch saves wasted searching. Between 1872 and 1887 there was no dower to release, and no Utah statute required a wife to join her husband's deed. The conveyancing act of 1874 asked only for the signature of the person the interest passed from⁶⁵. A husband's sole deed in those years is therefore normal and complete, and the absence of a wife's signature on it means nothing.

One consequence outlives the change. Where a husband conveyed land without his wife's consent while dower was in force, and died after 1898, her dower right in that land was not abrogated by the section abolishing dower⁶⁶. So a conveyance made between 1887 and 1898 without the wife's signature can still carry a live claim decades later, and the litigation it produced is worth looking for.

How a wife released dower during the restored period was fixed by a territorial act approved 25 February 1888. Where the husband conveyed or mortgaged land, the wife could join in the deed with him or with his attorney-in-fact, meaning a person he had authorized in writing to act for him. Her joining transferred every right of dower she had. Her signature had to be witnessed. She then had to acknowledge the deed in the same manner as an unmarried woman, meaning she appeared before an officer authorized to take acknowledgments and confirmed that the signature was hers and freely given⁶⁷. She could also join in a power of attorney for the same purpose⁶⁸. The act reached backward, validating instruments married women had executed since 2 March 1887 that released dower, and those conveying the couple's whole interest without mentioning it⁶⁹.

Those words carry weight for anyone reading Utah deeds. A wife signed and acknowledged in the same manner as an unmarried woman, and the acknowledgment on a Utah deed is the ordinary one taken from any grantor.

Three further situations called for both signatures. A married owner could not sell, mortgage, or contract away a recorded homestead unless husband and wife joined in the same instrument⁷⁰. A husband could still convey it without her, but only where the buyer took subject to her right⁷¹. Neither spouse could remove the other or the children from the homestead without consent⁷². A husband also needed his wife's consent before he could mortgage or otherwise burden personal property of his own that the law protected from seizure. This included a chattel mortgage, which is a mortgage on goods rather than on land. No such mortgage was valid unless both of them signed it⁷³.

A homestead is the family home and the land around it, protected by law from most creditors and authorized by the Constitution⁷⁴. A claimant could record a declaration of homestead, and that declaration names the family. It had to state that the maker headed a family, describe the premises, and estimate their cash value. It was then executed, acknowledged, and filed with the recorder of each county where the land lay⁷⁵. Recording was optional for the exemption itself, which stood whether or not a declaration was made⁷⁶. It mattered for a different purpose: where a homestead had been selected and recorded before a conveyance, husband and wife both had to join in the deed for it to be valid⁷⁷.

Which children could own land

A child could own land at any age, taking it by inheritance, gift, or purchase exactly as an adult did. Managing and selling it was the constraint: no one had power over a minor's property as guardian except by appointment of the court⁷⁸, so a sale of a minor's land ran through a court proceeding and left a file.

Witnessing a deed

A witness of any age could serve, provided he was credible. The rule ran through 1950. The territorial conveyancing act of 1874 required a deed to be signed by one or more credible witnesses and set no age for them⁷⁹, and the state code kept the same test. A deed was made ready for recording either by the grantor acknowledging it, as above, or by proof taken from a subscribing witness — a witness who had signed the deed⁸⁰. That witness had to swear that the person named as a party was the person who executed the deed, and that he himself signed as a witness at the maker's request⁸¹. Credibility, not age, was the test, and in practice deed witnesses were adults, since a witness might be called years later to prove the deed.

People barred from owning land

Utah enacted an alien land law in 1943, after a federal relocation camp for Japanese Americans was established in the state during the Second World War. It barred the purchase of land by aliens ineligible for citizenship — in practice Japanese immigrants, whom federal law barred from naturalizing — and allowed them yearly leases only. It was repealed in 1947⁸².

Land held by Native people was governed by federal treaty, reservation, and allotment policy rather than by Utah statute, so the records are federal rather than county. Utah passed no statute on the subject, which is why nothing is cited here for it.

A plural wife's position in the land records

A plural wife took from her husband by gift. She could accept a gift of his property outright, or acquire title to his real estate by adverse possession founded on a gift — holding it openly as her own for the statutory period⁸³.

That is why a plural wife often appears in the county recorder's books rather than in her husband's estate file. Look for her as a grantee, meaning the person to whom land is conveyed, holding in her own right. Look for her too as the occupant of land a court confirmed in her name. If you are looking for her in probate, you may be looking in the wrong series.

Inheritance

The territorial rule from 1852 to 1897

Utah's first intestacy statute came with the 1852 act on the estates of decedents, and it ran for nearly half a century. To die intestate is to die without a valid will.

The homestead occupied by the wife or any part of the family at the husband's death was held free to their use and was not liable to any claim against the estate. What remained after debts was split in equal shares among his children or their heirs. If the mother outlived him, a share equal to a child's went to her children through her, and she held it for her lifetime or until she remarried. Where the man had had more than one wife, that share was divided equally between the living and the heirs of those who had died, those heirs taking by right of representation — stepping into a dead parent's place⁸⁴. Personal property was distributed to the same people in the same proportions⁸⁵.

Two things follow. A territorial widow took a child's part, not a fixed fraction, and she took it for life or until she remarried — so a widow's remarriage ends her interest and you should expect the record to show it. And the statute on its face contemplated a man with more than one wife, dividing the mother's share among them; a territorial estate file can therefore name several wives without any irregularity.

The state rule after 1898

Statehood replaced the territorial scheme, and what came in kept its shape until after 1950. Two rules worked together. The surviving wife took one-third of her husband's land in fee simple, set out under Property Ownership above⁸⁶. The estate was then divided on a sliding scale that turned on who else survived⁸⁷. Issue means descendants — children, grandchildren, and so on down.

That amount was $5,000 from statehood, and still $5,000 in the compilation of 1917. The legislature raised it to $25,000 in 1925, and there it stayed through the 1940s⁸⁸. So for a death before 1925 the figure to work with is $5,000, and for a death after it, $25,000⁸⁹. The five situations themselves did not change.

One trap sits inside this. A widow did not collect twice on the land. Her share of her husband's real property under the scale was not additional to the one-third in fee she already took, so an estate division that looks short is usually following that proviso rather than shorting her⁹⁰.

A widow's claim against a will

A married man could not devise away from his wife more than two-thirds in value of his legal or equitable estates in real property without her written consent⁹¹. Where his will did provide for her, the provision was construed to be in place of her statutory share rather than in addition, unless the will showed he meant both. To keep the will's provision instead, she had to file a written acceptance with the clerk of the court. She had four months from the day the will was admitted to probate. Where she was insane, incompetent, or out of the state, a guardian chose for her⁹². Her written consent, acceptance, or renunciation is a signed paper in the estate file and names her.

Homestead and family allowance

The homestead and the exempt personal property passed to the surviving spouse and the minor children, free of the deceased's debts. The court set them apart on petition⁹³. That petition names the survivor and the minor children, which makes it one of the more useful papers in a Utah estate file. The survivor could stay in the homestead and draw a court-ordered allowance for support while the estate was settled, ranking ahead of creditors⁹⁴. An estate worth $1,500 or less was closed by a summary procedure⁹⁵.

Guardians and the age of fourteen

A guardian could be appointed of the person, of the estate, or of both⁹⁶, so look for two records rather than one. Guardianship of the estate could run until the minor reached majority⁹⁷.

At fourteen the child got a voice. The court gave due consideration to the preference of a child old enough to form an intelligent one. A minor of fourteen could name his own guardian, subject to the court's approval⁹⁸. The rule is as old as the territorial act of 1852⁹⁹. He could also start the proceeding himself, by his own petition¹⁰⁰. A guardianship record in which the child names the guardian is therefore evidence the child had turned 14, which brackets a birth year.

Where the court chose, it followed a fixed order: a parent first, then a person the wishes of a deceased parent pointed to, then the trustee of a fund applied to the child's support, then a relative. Between parents neither had it as of right; other things being equal a child of tender years went to the mother, and a child old enough to need education and preparation for work to the father¹⁰¹.

A guardianship ended by court order, at the minor's majority, or on the minor's marriage — though the court could keep a guardian over the estate after a marriage until the minor came of age¹⁰². The guardian's final settlement is the other document to find, and it dates the minor's majority: 21 for a boy, 18 for a girl. A minor who had come of age could settle with the guardian and give a release, and it held good if fairly obtained¹⁰³. But a court-appointed guardian was not discharged until a year after majority¹⁰⁴. So a discharge dates from about a year past the birthday it marks. These files belong to the county probate court to 1896 and to the district court after it. A guardian was appointed chiefly because a minor owned property, so a child who inherited nothing often generated no guardianship record at all.

Children born outside marriage

The rule on children born outside marriage matters more in Utah than in most states, because it governs the children of plural marriages.

The 1852 act provided that illegitimate children and their mothers inherited from the father in the same way as legitimate children, whether he acknowledged the child or not, provided the court was satisfied he was the father¹⁰⁵. The rule then moved through four stages, and which stage a death falls in decides who inherited:

• In force from 1852, and carried into the Compiled Laws of 1876 unchanged¹⁰⁶.
• Reinforced for plural families by the seventh section of the Edmunds Act of 1882, which legitimated the children of such marriages born before 1 January 1883¹⁰⁷.
• Annulled going forward by the eleventh section of the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, which disapproved the Utah laws allowing inheritance from the father, saving children born within twelve months of the act and those already legitimated under the Edmunds Act¹⁰⁸.
• Statehood narrowed the rule and restated it. A child born outside marriage was an heir of any man who acknowledged himself the father, and in every case an heir of the mother, inheriting as though born in wedlock. The children of marriages void in law, or ended by divorce, were legitimate¹⁰⁹.

That last clause carries the weight for plural families. A plural marriage was null in law, so its children were declared legitimate by the general rule, without any need for a private act or a court petition. The section carried into the twentieth century unchanged¹¹⁰.

The 1896 legislature then said so expressly, and reopened the cases plural families had lost. One section declared that the illegitimate-inheritance section had always operated to include the issue of bigamous and polygamous marriages, saving only those left outside the proviso of the eleventh section of the Edmunds-Tucker Act¹¹¹. A companion section let any such heir who had lost in the territorial courts move for a new trial before 10 March 1897, the case passing to the corresponding state court and heard without prejudice from the lapse of time¹¹². An inheritance dispute decided against plural-family children before statehood may therefore have been tried a second time in 1896 or 1897.

A separate route ran through the adoption title, and it is easy to miss. A father could adopt a child born outside marriage by doing three things: acknowledging the child publicly as his own, receiving the child into his family (with his wife's consent if he was married), and otherwise treating the child as legitimate. A child adopted this way was deemed legitimate from birth¹¹³. No court order was needed, so the proof is conduct — household composition in a census, a name on a headstone, a share in an estate.

The United States Supreme Court held in 1891 that the 1852 statute survived the Morrill Act of 1862, so a plural wife's child whose father died in 1864 inherited from him¹¹⁴. A separate rule protected the children of a bigamous marriage contracted in good faith, where the parties believed a former spouse dead or divorced: issue born or begotten before notice of the mistake were the legitimate issue of both parents¹¹⁵.

Wills and executors

Every person over 18 of sound mind could dispose of all his real and personal estate by will¹¹⁶. A married woman could dispose of all her separate estate the same way, without her husband's consent, and could alter or revoke the will as if she were single¹¹⁷. Note how far below majority that sits for a man: a 19-year-old Utah man could leave a valid will two years before he came of age.

An ordinary written will had four requirements. The testator — the person making the will — had to:

• sign at the end of the document;
• sign in front of the witnesses; and
• tell them the document was his will.

Two witnesses then had to sign at the end, at his request, in front of him, and in front of each other¹¹⁸. Utah set no age for a witness; competence at the time of attesting was the test, and a witness who later became incompetent did not defeat the will¹¹⁹. A gift to a subscribing witness was void unless two other competent subscribing witnesses had signed¹²⁰, which left such a witness with nothing to gain and so competent to prove the will.

Two informal wills were valid and both are common in western records. An olographic will — the Utah spelling of holographic — is one entirely written, dated, and signed in the testator's own hand; it needed no witnesses and was proved like any other private writing¹²¹. A nuncupative will is a spoken one. It was good only for an estate of $1,000 or less. The speaker had to be facing immediate death from an injury suffered in the previous twenty-four hours, and two people had to be present, one of them asked at the time to bear witness¹²².

Full age was required to administer an estate, and had been since 1852. An executor is the person a will names to carry it out; an administrator is the person the court appoints where there is no will or no willing executor. No person under the age of majority could serve as either¹²³. Where the only named executor was incompetent, the court granted letters of administration with the will annexed instead. That is the court's written authority to settle the estate under the will, given to someone other than the named executor. One territorial rule explains a common change of hands: an unmarried woman appointed administratrix lost her authority on marrying¹²⁴. By the 1940s a married woman named executrix served in her own right¹²⁵.

Taxation

What was taxed

Individuals in Utah paid a general property tax on land and personal property, local school taxes, and a road poll tax. The property tax runs through 1950. Under the territorial revenue act of 20 January 1865 an assessor and collector appointed by each county court assessed all taxable property at a fair cash value between January and the first Monday in June. The Territory took one-quarter of one percent of the assessed value, and the county court could add up to three-quarters of one percent¹²⁶. Several kinds of property were exempt:

• property of the United States, the Territory, and the counties;
• property held by literary, scientific, and benevolent institutions and used for those purposes;
• buildings for worship and their grounds; and
• up to $1,000 belonging to a person who was insane.

The assessment lists these acts produced are the territorial equivalent of a tax roll. They name heads of household who appear nowhere else. The Constitution then set the rule for the state. All tangible property was taxed at a uniform and equal rate in proportion to its value. The charge fell on the property rather than on the person, so no age entered into it¹²⁷.

Public property stayed exempt, together with lots and buildings used only for religious worship or charity, and burial grounds not held for private benefit. The legislature could exempt three more things:

• a home or homestead up to $250;
• personal property up to $100; and
• up to $2,000 belonging to a disabled veteran, his unmarried widow, or his minor orphans¹²⁸.

That last exemption is worth chasing. It puts a widow's name and her husband's service on a tax roll.

The income tax arrived with the constitutional amendments of November 1930. These allowed a graduated personal income tax, capped at six percent of net income¹²⁹. The statutes in the 1933 revision figure gain and loss on either side of 1 January 1931, which puts the start of the tax at the beginning of that year¹³⁰.

A state sales tax followed in 1933. It began at three-quarters of one percent and reached two percent the same year, and it fell on retail sales of goods, utility service, restaurant and other public food sales, and admissions¹³¹. It does not appear in the revenue title of the 1933 revision, because that revision took in no act of the 1933 legislature¹³².

The road poll tax

A poll tax, also called a capitation tax, is a flat charge on a person rather than on property. Utah's was payable in work, and the ages changed once before 1950, which matters when you are using a ledger to bracket a birth year.

The first act, approved 16 January 1862, required up to two days' labor, or one dollar and fifty cents a day in place of it. It reached every able-bodied male inhabitant over twenty-one and under sixty¹³³. An act of 11 March 1886 moved to the figures that lasted. It required two days' work of eight hours each, or three dollars in lawful money instead, and it reached every man over twenty-one and under fifty who was not physically unable to work¹³⁴. The state code carried those figures forward unchanged¹³⁵.

The machinery generated the records worth looking for. The road supervisor of each district notified every man subject to the tax, gave him a receipt for the labor done or the cash paid¹³⁶, and kept a receipt book with stubs marking which it was¹³⁷. A man who failed to appear became delinquent and was sued in the name of the county¹³⁸.

For genealogy this is the useful list, because it catches men who owned nothing and so appear on no property roll. Poll tax ledgers survive for some towns and precincts. A man who appears and then drops off has usually reached 50, moved, died, or been excused as physically incapacitated; collection was locally unpopular and uneven, so absence from a ledger proves much less than presence on one.

Courts

Jury service

Territorial law came first, and it was narrower. Under the act of 21 January 1859, which governed to the end of 1897, a man could not serve on a grand or petit jury unless he was:

• a male citizen of the United States;
• over twenty-one;
• of reputed sound mind and discretion;
• not so disabled in body that he could not serve;
• never convicted of a capital or infamous crime;
• an owner of taxable property who paid taxes in the Territory; and
• a resident for the whole year before¹³⁹.

The first state code kept most of that and added a literacy test. From 1898 a person was competent to serve as a juror who:

• was a citizen of the United States over the age of twenty-one;
• could read and write English;
• had lived six months in the county where called;
• was a taxpayer in the state; and
• was of reputable sound mind and discretion, and not so disabled in body as to be unable to serve¹⁴⁰.

Those qualifications were the whole test. They applied the same way to a juror drawn from the regular list and to a bystander summoned at the courthouse to fill out a jury that had come up short.

Federal law reached into the jury box during the polygamy prosecutions. The Poland Act of 1874 redrew how Utah juries were selected. The Edmunds Act of 1882 then let either side challenge a juror in a bigamy, polygamy, or unlawful cohabitation case, on the ground that he practiced plural marriage or believed it right¹⁴¹. Jury lists in those prosecutions were shaped accordingly.

Utah was the first state in the country to make women eligible for jury service, and the change is visible in a single word. The territorial statute had made a person competent who was a male citizen of the United States over twenty-one¹⁴²; the revisers who prepared the first state code dropped the word, leaving a citizen over twenty-one, and women became eligible in 1898¹⁴³.

Eligible is not the same as liable to serve. The same code that let women qualify also placed every female citizen on the list of people exempt from jury duty, alongside judges, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and railroad men¹⁴⁴. A summoned person claimed the exemption by sending the clerk an affidavit stating the ground, which the clerk filed¹⁴⁵. So a Utah woman between 1898 and the 1940s served if she chose to, and a woman's name on a jury list is a record of that choice. By the code in force in the 1940s the blanket exemption had narrowed to a woman having the care of minor children¹⁴⁶.

The taxpayer requirement is the qualification that did the most work in practice, and it kept many poor men off juries. A juror had to own taxable property at the moment he was offered, not merely when the jury list was drawn¹⁴⁷. It was not unchallenged. In an early territorial case the supreme court let a man sit who owned no taxable property and paid no taxes, reasoning that a property qualification for jurors could not stand against the constitutional right of trial by jury¹⁴⁸. The requirement nonetheless stayed in the territorial compilations, was enforced in the cases below, and was carried into the state code of 1898. The courts drew one line in the juror's favor. A man who owned taxable property and was willing to pay was competent even though he had never been assessed and had paid nothing. The failure to assess him was no fault of his¹⁴⁹.

A grand jury decides whether there is enough evidence to charge a person with a crime. In Utah it was a body of seven¹⁵⁰. By the code in force in the 1940s the seven had to be male citizens, so the grand jury stayed closed to women long after the trial jury opened¹⁵¹.

The state constitution made this straightforward. It guaranteed a jury of “jurors,” naming no sex¹⁵². It also declared that male and female citizens should enjoy equally all civil, political, and religious rights and privileges¹⁵³. So admitting women to the jury box in 1898 took an ordinary statute and no amendment.

Jury eligibility and the vote arrived separately, which is easy to conflate. Utah women voted from a territorial act approved 12 February 1870, lost the vote under the Edmunds-Tucker Act in 1887, and regained it in the Constitution of 1895¹⁵⁴. Jury service came separately, with the first state code in 1898.

The age of criminal responsibility

The rule was the same from 1850 to 1950. Everyone could commit a crime except the classes the statute listed, and the first two were children. A child under seven could not. Nor could a child between seven and fourteen, unless there was clear proof that he knew at the time that the act was wrong. The territorial penal code, as printed in the compilation of 1876, stated it in those terms¹⁵⁵, and the state code of 1898 repeated it¹⁵⁶. From fourteen a person bore full criminal responsibility and was tried as an adult. The same section excused a married woman acting under the threats, command, or coercion of her husband, except where the crime was punishable with death.

An adult who counseled, advised, or encouraged a child under fourteen to commit a crime was a principal in that crime, and was punished as though he had committed it himself¹⁵⁷. So where a young child was involved, expect the charge to fall on an adult.

The juvenile court

Utah reached a juvenile court in stages, and sources differ on which act to call the founding one. A reform school act of 1888 came first. The legislature of 1903 then created the office of probation officer, allowed children to be placed with the Children's Aid Society, and barred the jailing of children under sixteen except on serious charges¹⁵⁸. The statewide juvenile court system came with chapter 117 of the laws of 1905, amended by chapter 139 of 1907¹⁵⁹. If a source dates the court to 1903 and another to 1905, both are describing part of the same sequence. Its jurisdiction reached children eighteen and under and covered custody, detention, guardianship, probation, neglect, dependency, and delinquency. A further act in 1931 rebuilt the system¹⁶⁰. It made the juvenile court a special court of record, with a judge for each district appointed by a state commission¹⁶¹. It also gave the court exclusive original jurisdiction over the neglect, dependency, and delinquency of children under eighteen. A child of fourteen or older charged with what would be a felony in an adult fell to both courts at once. The juvenile court shared jurisdiction with the district court, and could either decide the case itself or send the child on. Once it had taken a case, its jurisdiction ran to twenty-one¹⁶².

The effect on the records is the point. From 1905 a child of 18 or under went before the juvenile court rather than onto the ordinary criminal docket. So the file to look for is a juvenile one, and juvenile files are typically closed.

Witnesses

A witness of any age could testify, and the rule reaches back into the territorial decades, 1850 to 1897. The early territorial practice act, printed in the compilation of 1876, set no age bar at all; it disqualified a person convicted of felony and barred a husband or wife from testifying for or against the other¹⁶³. The three-class rule below was in place by the compilation of 1888¹⁶⁴ and was carried into the state code. The statute barred only three classes:

• people of unsound mind when brought forward to testify;
• children under ten who seemed unable to take in the facts they were asked about, or to relate them truly; and
• a party to a transaction with someone since dead or insane, where the other side sued or defended as guardian, executor, administrator, or heir¹⁶⁵.

So a child of ten or over faced no age bar at all. A younger child testified if the judge found the capacity. The exclusions turned on soundness of mind and on interest, not on race.

Husbands and wives were protected from being made to testify against each other. The constitution itself provided that a wife should not be compelled to testify against her husband, nor a husband against his wife¹⁶⁶. Neither spouse could be forced to testify against the other in a criminal case¹⁶⁷. In general neither could testify for or against the other without consent. Two exceptions applied: where one was charged with a violent crime against the other, and in cases of desertion or failure to support¹⁶⁸. A parallel rule ran in civil cases¹⁶⁹.

Sources and Where to Verify

Constitutions

• Constitution of the State of Utah. Framed by the constitutional convention held at Salt Lake City, 4 March–8 May 1895; adopted by the voters November 1895; effective at statehood 4 January 1896. Art. I, § 10 (jury of jurors, no sex named); art. I, § 12 (compelling a spouse to testify); art. I, § 21 (slavery and involuntary servitude forbidden); art. III (the ordinance irrevocable, prohibiting plural marriage); art. IV, § 1 (equal civil, political, and religious rights for male and female citizens); art. XIII, §§ 2–3 (uniform and equal taxation of tangible property, exemptions, and the graduated income tax, both as amended 4 November 1930); art. XXII, § 1 (homestead); art. XXII, § 2 (married woman's separate property). Printed in full in the front matter of the Revised Statutes of 1898 and again in that of 1933. Utah State Legislature. https://le.utah.gov/xcode/constitution.html (accessed 29 July 2026).

Territorial and State Codes and Compilations

• The Compiled Laws of the State of Utah, 1917. Compiled by Allen T. Sanford and Richard B. Thurman. 2 vols. [Salt Lake City]: Century Printing Co., 1919. Carries the wife's fee-simple third (§ 6406), the succession scheme with its $5,000 ceiling (§ 6408), the abolition of dower and curtesy (§ 6412), inheritance by children born outside marriage (§ 6413), and legitimation by a father's public acknowledgment (§ 19); its annotations are the fastest route to the case law. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/compiledlawsofst1917utah (accessed 29 July 2026).
• The Compiled Laws of the Territory of Utah. Salt Lake City: Printed at the Deseret News Steam Printing Establishment, 1876. The essential territorial volume, and the one to reach for on any question before 1888. It prints the Organic Act of 9 September 1850; the act of 3 March 1852 on the estates of decedents at §§ 653–684, including the intestacy rule for plural wives (§ 676) and inheritance by children born outside marriage (§ 677); the woman suffrage act of 12 February 1870 (§ 43); the act of 16 February 1872 on the property rights of married persons (§§ 1020–1022); guardian selection at fourteen (§ 1027); the conveyancing act of 20 February 1874 (§§ 617–649, with the deed requirements at § 617 and a married woman's own conveyance at § 647); the revenue act of 20 January 1865 (§§ 344–362); the road poll tax act of 16 January 1862 (§ 363); the juror qualification from the act of 21 January 1859 (§ 1073); witness rules in the civil practice act (§§ 1603–1604); and the penal code on who could commit a crime (§ 1852). Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/compiledlawsofte00utah (accessed 29 July 2026).
• The Compiled Laws of Utah. 2 vols. Salt Lake City: Herbert Pembroke, Book, Job and Legal Blank Printer, 1888. Volume 1 prints the federal legislation, including the Edmunds-Tucker Act in full (§ 11 annulling the Utah inheritance statute, § 18 restoring dower), and the road poll tax (§ 2077). Volume 2 carries the Act Regulating Marriage of 8 March 1888 (§§ 2583–2601, with the marrying ages of 14 and 12 at § 2584 and parental consent at § 2591), the 1872 married women's property and dower-abolition act (§§ 2528–2530), the Release of Dower act of 25 February 1888 (§§ 2531–2533), the deed-acknowledgment sections (§§ 2624, 2632), wills and succession (§§ 2647–2663, 2742), and the jury qualification limited to male citizens (§ 3067). Digital images. Internet Archive. Vol. 1, https://archive.org/details/compiledlawsofut01utah; vol. 2, https://archive.org/details/compiledlawsofut02utah (accessed 29 July 2026).
• The Revised Statutes of the State of Utah in Force Jan. 1, 1898. Revised, annotated, and published by authority of the legislature by Richard W. Young, Grant H. Smith, and William A. Lee, code commissioners. Lincoln, Neb.: State Journal Co., Printers, 1897. The pivot volume between territorial and state law, and the single most useful volume for this guide; it carries the common-law reception section (§ 2488), the wife’s fee-simple third (§ 2826), the abolition of dower and curtesy (§ 2832), the succession scheme (§ 2828), inheritance by children born outside marriage (§ 2833), the jury qualification and the exemption of female citizens (§§ 1297, 1299), and the two 1896 sections on inheritance by the issue of polygamous marriages and the reopening of cases decided against them (§§ 2848–2849); the revision was authorized by ch. 85 of the laws of 1896. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/revisedstatuteso00utah (accessed 29 July 2026).
• Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933. [n.p.]: published by authority of an act of the legislature, 1933. Published 17 June 1933, effective 26 June 1933; the code committee dated its preface at Salt Lake City on 31 October 1933. The bridge volume between the 1917 compilation and the 1943 code: sections carry a title-chapter-section number and each prints its 1917 predecessor in parentheses, in the form (C. L. 17, § 6347). By § 88-1-3 the revision takes in no act of the 1933 legislature, so a statute passed that session must be read in the session volume instead. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/revisedstatuteso0000unse (accessed 29 July 2026). The scans are lending copies with search inside disabled.
• Utah Code Annotated, 1943. 6 vols. [Chicago]: Callaghan & Co., 1943. Adopted by S.B. 18, approved 26 January 1943, and in force until replaced by the code of 1953; the code governing the last decade covered here. Digital images. Utah Law Digital Commons, S.J. Quinney College of Law. https://dc.law.utah.edu/uca/ (accessed 29 July 2026). The set is also held by the Utah State Law Library and the Utah State Archives.

Session Laws and Federal Statutes

• Acts, Resolutions, and Memorials, Passed by the First Annual, and Special Sessions, of the Legislative Assembly, of the Territory of Utah. Great Salt Lake City: Published by Authority of the Legislative Assembly, 1852. Prints the Act in Relation to Service (80–82), the Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners and the Act for the Further Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners (91–94), and the act on the estates of decedents. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/actsresolutionsm00utah (accessed 29 July 2026).
• Edmunds Act. Act of 22 March 1882, 22 Stat. 31. Unlawful cohabitation; disqualification from voting, office, and jury service; § 7 legitimating children born before 1 January 1883.
• Edmunds-Tucker Act. Act of 3 March 1887, 24 Stat. 635. Dissolution of the church corporation; repeal of woman suffrage in the territory; § 11 annulling the Utah inheritance statute.
• Laws of the Territory of Utah and Laws of the State of Utah. The session volumes holding the acts cited above: 1903, ch. 124, 1905, ch. 117, and 1907, ch. 139, and the act of 1931, p. 51 (juvenile court); 1925, ch. 89 (the succession ceiling raised from $5,000 to $25,000); 1939, p. 66 (the widening of the racial bar to marriage); 1943, p. 127 (the alien land law); 1933, ch. 63, and Second Special Session 1933, ch. 20 (the sales tax); and 1963, ch. 43, p. 163 (repeal of the racial bar to marriage, effective 14 May 1963). The repeal of the alien land law in 1947 is in the same series. The Internet Archive holds no Utah session-law volumes. The Utah State Courts law library gives access to Utah Session Laws from 1851 to the present on a Utah public library card. Utah State Courts. https://www.utcourts.gov/en/about/miscellaneous/law-library/research/utah.html (accessed 29 July 2026). The printed volumes are at the Utah State Law Library and the Utah State Archives, and the set is also in HeinOnline’s State Session Laws Library.
• An Act to secure Freedom to all Persons within the Territories of the United States. Act of 19 June 1862, ch. 111, 12 Stat. 432. Abolished slavery in the territories, ending the two Utah service acts of 1852.
• Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act. Act of 1 July 1862, 12 Stat. 501. Bigamy made a felony in the territories; limit on church property.
• Poland Act. Act of 23 June 1874, 18 Stat. 253. Probate courts stripped of civil and criminal jurisdiction; jury selection redefined.
• Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. 9 Stat. 922. Ratifications exchanged at Querétaro 30 May 1848; proclaimed 4 July 1848.

Court Cases

• Buford v. Houtz. 5 Utah 591; 18 P. 633 (1888); affirmed, 133 U.S. 320 (1890).
• Conway v. Clinton. 1 Utah 215 (1875).
• Cook v. Higley. 10 Utah 228; 37 P. 336 (1894).
• Cope v. Cope. 137 U.S. 682 (1891). https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/137/682 (accessed 29 July 2026).
• Dooly v. Stringham. 4 Utah 107; 7 P. 405 (1885).
• First National Bank v. Kinner. 1 Utah 100 (1873).
• In re Garr's Estate. 31 Utah 57; 86 P. 757 (1906).
• Hilton v. Stewart. 31 Utah 255; 87 P. 900 (1906).
• Hilton v. Thatcher. 31 Utah 360; 88 P. 20 (1906).
• Kidman v. Yonk. 115 Utah 292; 204 P.2d 452 (1949). Sets the succession statute of 1925 beside the 1943 section. Digital images. Caselaw Access Project. https://static.case.law/utah/115/cases/0292-01.json (accessed 29 July 2026).
• Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. United States. 136 U.S. 1 (1890).
• Norton v. Tufts. 19 Utah 470; 57 P. 409 (1899).
• People v. Green. 1 Utah 11 (1876). The first reported Utah case.
• Raleigh v. Wells. 29 Utah 217; 81 P. 908 (1905).
• Reece v. Knott. 3 Utah 451; 24 P. 757. An early territorial case holding that a property qualification for jurors could not stand against the constitutional right of trial by jury. Reported late, so the Pacific Reporter citation is much later than the decision. Digital images. Caselaw Access Project, which dates it to January 1861. https://static.case.law/utah/3/cases/0451-01.json (accessed 29 July 2026).
• Stanton v. Stanton. 421 U.S. 7 (1975).
• Stanton v. Stanton. 429 U.S. 501 (1977).
• Thomas v. Union Pacific R. R. Co. 1 Utah 232 (1875).
• United States v. Reynolds. 1 Utah 226 (1875). The annotation in the 1898 code cites the juror point at page 227. Digital images. Caselaw Access Project. https://static.case.law/utah/1/cases/0226-01.json (accessed 29 July 2026).
• United States v. Simpson. 4 Utah 227; 7 P. 257 (1885).
• In re Vetas' Estate. 110 Utah 187; 170 P.2d 183 (1946). Holds a common-law marriage invalid in Utah.
• W. F. Jensen Candy Co. v. State Tax Commission. 90 Utah 359; 61 P.2d 629 (1936). Sets out the sales tax act of 1933 and its amendments. Digital images. Caselaw Access Project. https://static.case.law/utah/90/cases/0359-01.json (accessed 29 July 2026).
• Whyte v. Blair. 885 P.2d 791 (Utah 1994). States that Utah never recognized common-law marriage before 1987.

Secondary and Reference Works

• American Civil Liberties Union. "A Jury of One's Peers." On Utah as the first state to admit women to jury service in 1898. Women had sat on juries earlier in Wyoming and Washington territories, so the claim is about statehood. https://www.aclu.org/news/smart-justice/jury-ones-peers (accessed 29 July 2026).
• Bradley, Martha Sonntag. "Reclamation of Young Citizens: Reform of Utah's Juvenile Legal System, 1888–1910." Utah Historical Quarterly 51, no. 4 (1983): 328–46. On the 1888 reform school act and the road to the juvenile court. Utah State History. https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/uhq_volume51_1983_number4 (accessed 29 July 2026).
• Cushman, Barry. "Intestate Succession in a Polygamous Society." Connecticut Law Review 23 (1991): 281–332. The authoritative treatment of the 1852 statute and its successors. Notre Dame Law School Scholarship. https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1248/ (accessed 29 July 2026).
• Densho Encyclopedia. "Alien land laws." On Utah's 1943 act and its 1947 repeal. https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Alien_land_laws/ (accessed 29 July 2026).
• Gee, Elizabeth D. "The Common Law of England in the Territory of Utah." Utah Historical Quarterly 60, no. 1 (1992). On the territorial standing of the common law before the 1898 revision. Utah State History. https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/uhq_volume60_1992_number1 (accessed 29 July 2026).
• Mason, Patrick Q. "The Prohibition of Interracial Marriage in Utah, 1888–1963." Utah Historical Quarterly 76, no. 2 (2008). Quotes the 1939 bill as introduced. Digital images. Issuu. https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/uhq_volume76_2008_number2 (accessed 29 July 2026).
• "Minutes of a Special Conference." Latter-Day Saints' Millennial Star, Supplement, 1853, p. 18. Orson Pratt's discourse of 29 August 1852 announcing plural marriage; also printed in Journal of Discourses, 1:54–66.
• McGovney, Dudley O. "The Anti-Japanese Land Laws of California and Ten Other States." California Law Review 35 (1947): 7–54. Gives the session-law locator for Utah's 1943 act. Digital images. Berkeley Law Library. https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1109213 (accessed 29 July 2026).
• Note. "The Utah Uniform Probate Code — Protection of the Surviving Spouse — The Elective Share." Utah Law Review 1976, no. 4: 771. Unsigned student work, as the form of the title indicates. Traces the surviving spouse's statutory rights back through Utah's dower history; the acts themselves are now cited above from the compilations. Utah Law Digital Commons. https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/ (accessed 29 July 2026).
• United States. Women's Bureau. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Utah. Bulletin No. 157-43 (Revised). By Sara Louise Buchanan and others. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1949. Stated as of 1 January 1948, with section-by-section citations to the 1943 code; the best cross-check for the twentieth-century rules above. An earlier edition, by Buchanan and Mary Loretta Sullivan, was issued in 1939 and states the law as of 1 January 1938. Digital images. FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-43-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf (accessed 29 July 2026).
• Utah Division of Archives and Records Service. "Poll taxes in Utah?" 17 December 2020. On surviving poll tax ledgers; the ages of liability given there differ from the statute, which governs. https://archives.utah.gov/2020/12/17/poll-taxes-in-utah/ (accessed 29 July 2026).
• Utah State Legislature. Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel. Utah’s General Sales & Use Tax. 2011; and Sales Tax. 2017. Date the income tax to 1931 and the sales tax to 1933, with the initial rate and base of the 1933 tax. https://le.utah.gov/documents/2017salestax.pdf (accessed 29 July 2026).
• "The Utah Juvenile Court Act of 1965." Utah Law Review. Cites the founding acts of 1903, ch. 124, 1905, ch. 117, and 1907, ch. 139. https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3135&context=ulr (accessed 29 July 2026).

Citations

1. The Revised Statutes of the State of Utah in Force Jan. 1, 1898 (Lincoln, Neb.: State Journal Co., Printers, 1897), § 2488, "Common law in force"; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/revisedstatuteso00utah : accessed 29 July 2026). Cited below as Revised Statutes of 1898. The section is new with the revision, having no predecessor in the territorial compilations ↩
2. People v. Green, 1 Utah 11 (1876), the first reported Utah case, noted in the annotation printed under Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2488 ↩
3. Thomas v. Union Pacific R. R. Co., 1 Utah 232 (1875) ↩
4. First National Bank v. Kinner, 1 Utah 100 (1873) ↩
5. Buford v. Houtz, 5 Utah 591; 18 P. 633 (1888), affirmed 133 U.S. 320 (1890) ↩
6. Organic Act of the Territory of Utah, approved 9 September 1850, 9 Stat. 453; printed in Compiled Laws of 1876, at 5–28 ↩
7. Poland Act, Act of 23 June 1874, 18 Stat. 253 ↩
8. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 9 Stat. 922; ratifications exchanged at Querétaro, 30 May 1848, proclaimed 4 July 1848 ↩
9. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1541, "Period of minority"; carried from The Compiled Laws of Utah, 2 vols. (Salt Lake City: Herbert Pembroke, Book, Job and Legal Blank Printer, 1888), vol. 2, § 2560; digital images, Internet Archive, vol. 1 (https://archive.org/details/compiledlawsofut01utah) and vol. 2 (https://archive.org/details/compiledlawsofut02utah) : accessed 29 July 2026. Volume 1 carries the federal legislation and the revenue title; volume 2 carries domestic relations, conveyances, wills, succession, and the jury sections, so most citations below are to volume 2 ↩
10. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933 ([n.p.]: published by authority of an act of the legislature, 1933), § 14-1-1, "Period of Minority" (C. L. 17, § 3955); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/revisedstatuteso0000unse : accessed 29 July 2026). Utah Code Annotated, 1943 ([Chicago]: Callaghan & Co., 1943; adopted by S.B. 18, approved 26 January 1943), § 14-1-1; digital images, Utah Law Digital Commons, S.J. Quinney College of Law (https://dc.law.utah.edu/uca/ : accessed 29 July 2026); cited below as Utah Code of 1943. United States Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Utah, Bulletin No. 157-43 (Revised) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1949), topic 1; digital images, FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-43-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf : accessed 29 July 2026) ↩
11. Stanton v. Stanton, 429 U.S. 501 (1977), reciting the Utah Supreme Court's statement on remand ↩
12. Stanton v. Stanton, 421 U.S. 7 (1975); Session Laws of Utah, 1975, ch. 39 ↩
13. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1542, "Minors' contracts. Disaffirmance" ↩
14. Utah Code of 1943, § 14-1-3; Women's Bureau, Report for Utah, topic 2 ↩
15. The common law received in the Territory. No territorial statute fixed a marrying age before the act of 1888; the Compiled Laws of 1876 carry no marriage chapter, and before that act a marriage could be contracted by the mutual consent of parties capable of contracting, without ceremony or formality, United States v. Simpson, 4 Utah 227; 7 P. 257 (1885). That the common-law ages of 14 and 12 were the operative figures is confirmed by the 1888 act itself, which enacted those two ages unchanged before the revisers raised them in 1898 ↩
16. Compiled Laws of 1888, vol. 2, § 2584, subsec. 4, from ch. V of the laws of that session, "An Act Regulating Marriage," approved 8 March 1888; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/compiledlawsofut02utah : accessed 29 July 2026) ↩
17. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1184, "Other void marriages," subsec. 4. The section descends from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2584, but the revisers raised the ages: the 1888 text voids a marriage below 14 and 12, the 1898 text below 16 and 14 ↩
18. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1215, "When obtained by force or fraud. Minors"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2586 ↩
19. Compiled Laws of 1888, vol. 2, § 2591 ↩
20. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1190, "Minors. Consent of parent or guardian" ↩
21. Utah Code of 1943, § 40-1-9; Women’s Bureau, Report for Utah, topic 18 ↩
22. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1189, "License. Where issued"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2590 ↩
23. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1188, "Who may solemnize"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2589 ↩
24. Compiled Laws of 1888, §§ 2589 (probate judges, justices of the peace, and district and supreme court judges), 2590 (license from the clerk of the probate court); compare Revised Statutes of 1898, §§ 1188, 1189 ↩
25. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, § 40-1-8 (C. L. 17, § 2976) ↩
26. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, §§ 40-1-11, 40-1-12 (C. L. 17, §§ 2975, 2976) ↩
27. Revised Statutes of 1898, §§ 1184, subsec. 3, and 1187, "Marriage in good faith before unauthorized person" ↩
28. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1186, "Foreign marriages" ↩
29. United States v. Simpson, 4 Utah 227; 7 P. 257 (1885), noted in the annotation printed under Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1189 ↩
30. Compiled Laws of 1876, §§ 550–555, the ordinance incorporating the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at § 552 (power to solemnize marriage) and § 553 (registry of marriages, births, and deaths at every fully organized branch or stake) ↩
31. The provision is Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1184, "Other void marriages," subsec. 3, carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2584. Its effect was settled in In re Vetas' Estate, 110 Utah 187; 170 P.2d 183 (1946), and restated in Whyte v. Blair, 885 P.2d 791, 794 (Utah 1994), which says that before 1987 Utah never recognized common-law marriages and that such marriages were expressly prohibited. The 1987 statute is Utah Code § 30-1-4.5 ↩
32. "Minutes of a Special Conference," Latter-Day Saints' Millennial Star, Supplement, 1853, p. 18; the discourse also printed in Journal of Discourses, 1:54–66 ↩
33. Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, Act of 1 July 1862, 12 Stat. 501 ↩
34. Poland Act, 18 Stat. 253 ↩
35. Edmunds Act, Act of 22 March 1882, 22 Stat. 31, § 7 ↩
36. Edmunds-Tucker Act, Act of 3 March 1887, 24 Stat. 635; the dissolution of the church corporation upheld in Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. United States, 136 U.S. 1 (1890) ↩
37. Utah Const. of 1895, art. III, the ordinance irrevocable without the consent of the United States and the people of the state ↩
38. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1184, subsecs. 5–6 ↩
39. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, § 40-1-2, subsecs. 2, 7 ↩
40. Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2584; the 1888 origin traced in Patrick Q. Mason, "The Prohibition of Interracial Marriage in Utah, 1888–1963," Utah Historical Quarterly 76 (2008) ↩
41. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, § 40-1-2, subsecs. 5–6 (C. L. 17, § 2967) ↩
42. Laws of the State of Utah, 1939, p. 66, amending the section on prohibited and void marriages; introduced as S.B. No. 65, "An Act Amending Section 40-1-2, Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, Relating to Prohibited and Void Marriages," whose terms are set out in Patrick Q. Mason, "The Prohibition of Interracial Marriage in Utah, 1888–1963," Utah Historical Quarterly 76, no. 2 (2008). The page citation is the one given for the same act, on the sterilization proviso it added to the same section, in United States Women’s Bureau, Report for Utah, topic 19 ↩
43. Utah Code of 1943, §§ 40-1-2, 40-1-5, 40-3-8; Women's Bureau, Report for Utah, topic 22 ↩
44. Laws of the State of Utah, 1963, ch. 43, p. 163, "Inter-Racial Marriages," introduced as Senate Bill No. 80, "An Act Relating to Prohibiting Marriages Amending Section 30-1-2, Utah Code Annotated 1953, Removing Certain Racial Restrictions from Marriages," cited in Patrick Q. Mason, "The Prohibition of Interracial Marriage in Utah, 1888–1963," Utah Historical Quarterly 76, no. 2 (2008). The effective date of 14 May 1963 and the subsections struck appear on the face of the later validating section, Utah Code 30-1-2.2, which reaches interracial marriages contracted before 1 July 1965 that were barred by subsection 30-1-2(5) or (6) as those subsections stood before 14 May 1963 ↩
45. Compiled Laws of 1876, § 617, from "An Act concerning conveyances," approved 20 February 1874, § 1: a deed had to be signed by the person from whom the interest passed, "being of lawful age," and by one or more credible witnesses, and then acknowledged or proved and recorded ↩
46. An Act in Relation to Service, approved 4 February 1852, §§ 1–9; Acts, Resolutions, and Memorials (1852), 80–82 ↩
47. Act in Relation to Service, §§ 3 and 7 ↩
48. A Preamble and an Act for the Further Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners, and An Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners, passed 31 January 1852, §§ 1–2; Acts, Resolutions, and Memorials (1852), 91–93 ↩
49. An Act to secure Freedom to all Persons within the Territories of the United States, Act of 19 June 1862, ch. 111, 12 Stat. 432 ↩
50. Act concerning the property rights of married persons, approved 16 February 1872, §§ 1–3; printed in The Compiled Laws of the Territory of Utah (Salt Lake City: Printed at the Deseret News Steam Printing Establishment, 1876), §§ 1020–1022; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/compiledlawsofte00utah : accessed 29 July 2026); carried into Compiled Laws of 1888, §§ 2528–2530, whose margin also notes an amendment of 18 February 1880 ↩
51. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1198, "Separate property of wife, control of"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2528; and see Utah Const. of 1895, art. XXII, § 2 ↩
52. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1200, "Conveyance by husband or wife to the other" ↩
53. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1201, "Wife's wages. Her right to sue or defend" ↩
54. Compiled Laws of 1876, § 647 (act of 20 February 1874, § 31) ↩
55. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2832, "Dower and curtesy" ↩
56. The Compiled Laws of the State of Utah, 1917, comp. Allen T. Sanford and Richard B. Thurman, 2 vols. ([Salt Lake City]: Century Printing Co., 1919), § 6412 (1898, § 2832); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/compiledlawsofst1917utah : accessed 29 July 2026) ↩
57. Revised Statutes of 1898, §§ 2828 and 2832, read together: the succession scale runs to a "surviving husband or wife," while the fee-simple third of § 2826 runs to the wife alone ↩
58. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2826, "Wife's interest in husband's real property" ↩
59. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2826, closing sentences; carried forward as Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, § 101-4-3, "Wife’s Interest in Husband’s Real Property" (C. L. 17, § 6406), which prints the one-third in fee simple, the proviso for a wife who never resided in the territory or state, and the deduction of any homestead set aside to her ↩
60. Compiled Laws of 1917, § 6406, printing Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2826 ↩
61. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2826, proviso ↩
62. Compiled Laws of 1876, § 1022 (act of 1872, § 3); Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2530 ↩
63. Edmunds-Tucker Act, 24 Stat. 635, § 18, printed with its marginal heading "Dower right: (a) a widow endowed of third part of lands" in Compiled Laws of 1888, vol. 1 ↩
64. Revised Statutes of 1898, §§ 2826 and 2832, read together; and see the Note cited in the Source List below for the narrative ↩
65. Compiled Laws of 1876, § 617 (act of 20 February 1874, § 1), cited in full above ↩
66. Hilton v. Thatcher, 31 Utah 360; 88 P. 20 (1906); Hilton v. Stewart, 31 Utah 255; 87 P. 900 (1906); and Norton v. Tufts, 19 Utah 470; 57 P. 409 (1899), all noted in the annotation printed under Compiled Laws of 1917, § 6406 ↩
67. Act approved 25 February 1888, "Release of Dower," §§ 1–3; printed in Compiled Laws of 1888, §§ 2531–2533 ↩
68. Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2532 ↩
69. Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2533 ↩
70. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1155, "Conveyance of recorded homestead" ↩
71. Cook v. Higley, 10 Utah 228; 37 P. 336 (1894), noted in the annotation printed under Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1155 ↩
72. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1207, "Right to occupy homestead" ↩
73. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 167, "Wife must concur" ↩
74. Utah Const. of 1895, art. XXII, § 1 ↩
75. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, §§ 38-0-11 (contents), 38-0-12 (execution and filing) (C. L. 17, §§ 2902, 2901) ↩
76. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, § 38-0-10 (C. L. 17, § 2900) ↩
77. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, § 38-0-13, "Each Spouse Must Join in Conveyance or Encumbrance" (C. L. 17, § 2906) ↩
78. Utah Code of 1943, § 102-13-3 ↩
79. Compiled Laws of 1876, § 617 (act of 20 February 1874, § 1), cited in full above ↩
80. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1984, "Real estate conveyances to be acknowledged"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2624. The subscribing witness had also to be personally known to the officer or proved by a credible witness, § 1992 (Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2632) ↩
81. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1993, "What must be proven"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2633 ↩
82. Laws of the State of Utah, 1943, p. 127, cited as the Utah act in Dudley O. McGovney, "The Anti-Japanese Land Laws of California and Ten Other States," California Law Review 35 (1947): 7–54, at 8 n.12; digital images, Berkeley Law Library (https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1109213 : accessed 29 July 2026). For the repeal in 1947, Densho Encyclopedia, "Alien land laws" (https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Alien_land_laws/ : accessed 29 July 2026), and Nancy Taniguchi, "Japanese Immigrants in Utah," Utah History Encyclopedia. The repealing act itself is in the session volume for 1947, available through the Utah State Law Library and the Utah State Archives ↩
83. Raleigh v. Wells, 29 Utah 217; 81 P. 908 (1905), noted in the annotations printed under Compiled Laws of 1917, §§ 6406 and 6454 ↩
84. Compiled Laws of 1876, § 676, printing § 24 of the act in relation to the estates of decedents, approved 3 March 1852; and see Dooly v. Stringham, 4 Utah 107; 7 P. 405, holding that the section gives the widow a life interest in the homestead with the remainder to the children, noted in the annotation printed under Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2826 ↩
85. Compiled Laws of 1876, § 675 (act of 1852, § 23) ↩
86. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2826 ↩
87. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2828, "Succession"; carried as Compiled Laws of 1917, § 6408, "Succession in absence of will and of marriage contract," and appearing in the 1940s as Utah Code of 1943, § 101-4-5 ↩
88. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2828, subsec. 3, and Compiled Laws of 1917, § 6408, subsec. 3, both at $5,000; raised to $25,000 by Laws of the State of Utah, 1925, ch. 89. The Utah Supreme Court set the 1925 act and the 1943 section side by side in Kidman v. Yonk, 115 Utah 292; 204 P.2d 452 (1949), noting that the 1925 act made only minor amendments to § 6408 and that the section then stood unchanged until the revision of 1933; digital images, Caselaw Access Project (https://static.case.law/utah/115/cases/0292-01.json : accessed 29 July 2026) ↩
89. Utah Code of 1943, § 101-4-5; Women's Bureau, Report for Utah, topic 15, stating the law as of 1 January 1948 ↩
90. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2828, subsec. 1, proviso; Compiled Laws of 1917, § 6408, subsec. 1, proviso, providing that the share secured to the widow by that section is not additional to the interest provided for her in § 6406 ↩
91. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2731, "Who may make a will. Married man limited"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2647, and appearing in the 1940s as Utah Code of 1943, § 101-1-1 ↩
92. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2827, "When widow to elect between will and distributive share"; appearing in the 1940s as Utah Code of 1943, § 101-4-4 ↩
93. Utah Code of 1943, § 101-4-6; Women's Bureau, Report for Utah, topic 16 ↩
94. Utah Code of 1943, § 102-8-1 ↩
95. Utah Code of 1943, § 102-8-2 ↩
96. Utah Code of 1943, § 102-13-1 ↩
97. Utah Code of 1943, § 102-13-14 ↩
98. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 3995 ↩
99. Compiled Laws of 1876, § 1027 (act of 1852, § 5) ↩
100. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, § 102-13-12 (C. L. 17, § 7809), the district court appointing for minors with no guardian named by will or deed, on the petition of a relative or other person, or of the minor himself at 14 ↩
101. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, § 102-13-13, "Preferred Rights to Letters" (C. L. 17, § 7810) ↩
102. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, § 102-13-14 (C. L. 17, § 7811) ↩
103. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, § 102-13-15 (C. L. 17, § 7812) ↩
104. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, § 102-13-16 (C. L. 17, § 7813) ↩
105. Compiled Laws of 1876, § 677, printing § 25 of the act of 3 March 1852; quoted in Cope v. Cope, 137 U.S. 682 (1891) ↩
106. For the descent of the rule through the territorial period, see Barry Cushman, "Intestate Succession in a Polygamous Society," Connecticut Law Review 23 (1991): 281 ↩
107. Edmunds Act, 22 Stat. 31, § 7 ↩
108. Edmunds-Tucker Act, 24 Stat. 635, § 11 ↩
109. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2833, "Illegitimate children to inherit, when"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2742 ↩
110. Compiled Laws of 1917, § 6413 (1898, § 2833) ↩
111. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2848, "Inheritance by issue of polygamous marriages," from the laws of 1896, pp. 128–29 ↩
112. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2849, "Id. Cases heretofore determined. New trial" ↩
113. Compiled Laws of 1917, § 19, "Illegitimate child adopted by acknowledgment"; and see In re Garr's Estate, 31 Utah 57; 86 P. 757 (1906) ↩
114. Cope v. Cope, 137 U.S. 682 (1891); https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/137/682 (accessed 29 July 2026) ↩
115. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1185, "Children of bigamous marriages contracted in good faith"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2585 ↩
116. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2731; in force in the 1940s as Utah Code of 1943, § 101-1-1 ↩
117. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2733, "Married woman may make will as if single"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2649 ↩
118. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2735, "Written will, how executed"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2651 ↩
119. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2739, "Subsequent incompetency of witnesses" ↩
120. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2742, "When gift to witnesses void"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2657 ↩
121. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 2736, "Olographic will. Execution. Proof"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2652 ↩
122. Revised Statutes of 1898, §§ 2746–2748; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, §§ 2661–2663 ↩
123. Compiled Laws of 1876, §§ 773 and 785 (act of 1852, §§ 41 and 53) ↩
124. Compiled Laws of 1876, § 786 (act of 1852, § 54) ↩
125. Utah Code of 1943, §§ 102-3-17, 102-4-5 ↩
126. "An Act prescribing the manner of assessing and collecting Territorial and county taxes, and for other purposes," approved 20 January 1865; printed in Compiled Laws of 1876, §§ 344–362, with the annual assessment at § 345, the rates at § 346 (as amended 15 February 1866 and by the act of 19 February 1869), and the exemptions at § 359 ↩
127. Utah Const. of 1895, art. XIII, § 2, as amended 4 November 1930 ↩
128. Utah Const. of 1895, art. XIII, § 2 ↩
129. Utah Const. of 1895, art. XIII, § 3, as amended 4 November 1930 ↩
130. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, §§ 80-14-10 and 80-14-11, the basis and corporate-distribution sections of the revenue title, each turning on whether property was acquired before or after 1 January 1931 ↩
131. Utah State Legislature, Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel, Utah’s General Sales & Use Tax (2011) and Sales Tax (2017), recording the income tax enacted in 1931 and the sales tax in 1933, at an initial rate of three-quarters of one percent on retail sales of tangible personal property, utility services, restaurant and other public food sales, and admissions, and at two percent by the end of 1933; Utah State Legislature (https://le.utah.gov/documents/2017salestax.pdf : accessed 29 July 2026). The act itself is the Emergency Revenue Act of 1933, Laws of the State of Utah, 1933, ch. 63, amended at the Second Special Session of 1933 by ch. 20, which set the rate at two percent, and by chs. 91 and 92 of 1935; the chain is set out in W. F. Jensen Candy Co. v. State Tax Commission, 90 Utah 359; 61 P.2d 629 (1936); digital images, Caselaw Access Project (https://static.case.law/utah/90/cases/0359-01.json : accessed 29 July 2026) ↩
132. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, § 88-1-3, noted in the code committee’s preface ↩
133. "An Act providing for a poll tax for road purposes," approved 16 January 1862, § 1; printed in Compiled Laws of 1876, § 363. Organized city firemen were exempt on a certificate from their company ↩
134. Compiled Laws of 1888, vol. 1, § 2077, from the act of 11 March 1886. The receipt book with stubs is § 2078 ↩
135. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1743, "What is. Who liable. Collection. Expenditure" ↩
136. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1744, "Collection by supervisor. Notice. Labor. Receipt"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2075 ↩
137. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1746, "Receipt book and receipts" ↩
138. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1745, "Failure to labor"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 2076 ↩
139. Compiled Laws of 1876, § 1073, from "An Act prescribing certain qualifications necessary to enable a person to be eligible to hold office, vote, or serve as a juror," approved 21 January 1859, § 4 ↩
140. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1297, "Who competent as jurors"; and see §§ 1298–1299 for those declared incompetent and those exempt ↩
141. Edmunds Act, Act of 22 March 1882, 22 Stat. 31, § 5, printed in Compiled Laws of 1888, vol. 1 ↩
142. Compiled Laws of 1888, § 3067 ↩
143. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1297; and see American Civil Liberties Union, "A Jury of One's Peers" (https://www.aclu.org/news/smart-justice/jury-ones-peers : accessed 29 July 2026) ↩
144. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1299, "Who exempt," subsec. 14; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 3069 ↩
145. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1301, "Person exempt, how excused if summoned" ↩
146. Utah Code of 1943, §§ 48-0-10 (exemption), 48-0-11 (affidavit); Women’s Bureau, Report for Utah, topic 32 ↩
147. Conway v. Clinton, 1 Utah 215 (1875), noted in the annotation printed under Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1297 ↩
148. Reece v. Knott, 3 Utah 451; 24 P. 757, noted in the annotation printed under Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1297. A juror named Kinney was challenged for owning no taxable property and paying no taxes; the court let him sit, reasoning that a property qualification for jurors conflicted with the Seventh Amendment right of trial by jury. Digital images. Caselaw Access Project (https://static.case.law/utah/3/cases/0451-01.json : accessed 29 July 2026), which dates the decision to January 1861 ↩
149. United States v. Reynolds, 1 Utah 227, noted in the annotation printed under Revised Statutes of 1898, § 1297 ↩
150. Revised Statutes of 1898, §§ 1292–1293; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, §§ 3062–3063 ↩
151. Utah Code of 1943, § 105-18-2; Women's Bureau, Report for Utah, topic 32 ↩
152. Utah Const. of 1895, art. I, § 10 ↩
153. Utah Const. of 1895, art. IV, § 1 ↩
154. "An Act conferring upon women the elective franchise," approved 12 February 1870, § 1; printed in Compiled Laws of 1876, § 43. The franchise was repealed by the Edmunds-Tucker Act, 24 Stat. 635, and restored by Utah Const. of 1895, art. IV, § 1 ↩
155. Compiled Laws of 1876, § 1852 (penal code, § 22), subsecs. 1–2 ↩
156. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 4071, "All persons capable of committing crime, except following," subsecs. 1–2 and 8 ↩
157. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 4074, "Principals defined"; carried from Compiled Laws of 1888, § 4390 ↩
158. Laws of Utah, 1903, ch. 124, cited as a founding act in "The Utah Juvenile Court Act of 1965," Utah Law Review (https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3135&context=ulr : accessed 29 July 2026); the 1903 measures are described in Martha Sonntag Bradley, "Reclamation of Young Citizens: Reform of Utah's Juvenile Legal System, 1888–1910," Utah Historical Quarterly 51, no. 4 (1983): 328–46 ↩
159. Laws of Utah, 1905, ch. 117, and 1907, ch. 139; cited in "The Utah Juvenile Court Act of 1965," Utah Law Review (https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3135&context=ulr : accessed 29 July 2026), and the reform-school background traced in Martha Sonntag Bradley, "Reclamation of Young Citizens: Reform of Utah's Juvenile Legal System, 1888–1910," Utah Historical Quarterly 51, no. 4 (1983): 328–46 ↩
160. Laws of Utah, 1931, p. 51; codified as Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, ch. 7 of title 14 ↩
161. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, §§ 14-7-1, 14-7-2 (Laws of Utah, 1931, p. 51, §§ 1–2) ↩
162. Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, § 14-7-4, subsecs. 2–3 (Laws of Utah, 1931, p. 51, § 4) ↩
163. Compiled Laws of 1876, §§ 1603–1604 (civil practice act, §§ 378–379) ↩
164. Compiled Laws of 1888, vol. 2, § 3877, subsecs. 1–3 ↩
165. Revised Statutes of 1898, § 3413, "Cannot be witnesses: mentally unsound; children under ten; parties to transactions with deceased or insane" ↩
166. Utah Const. of 1895, art. I, § 12 ↩
167. Utah Const. of 1895, art. I, § 12; Utah Code of 1943, § 105-1-10 ↩
168. Utah Code of 1943, § 105-45-4; Women's Bureau, Report for Utah, topic 13 ↩
169. Utah Code of 1943, § 104-49-3 ↩

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.