Washington DC Historical Law Guide

Contents

Legal Ages at a Glance

General Principles

An English legal system received through two states

The law of Washington DC came from England, but it arrived second-hand. The District was cut out of two states, and it took its law from them. Maryland and Virginia both ran on English common law — judge-made law, handed down through court decisions rather than written by a legislature — and both had layered their own statutes on top of it. The District inherited the whole package, and the system was common law throughout, on both sides of the river.

Georgetown, the oldest settled part of the District, was laid out under an act of the Maryland General Assembly in 1751 and remained a Maryland town for fifty years. The District became a separate legal jurisdiction under the Organic Act of 27 February 1801, which divided the territory into two counties and fixed the law of each: Maryland law continued in force in Washington County, and Virginia law continued in force in Alexandria County, in both cases as those laws stood on that day¹.

Two bodies of law in one district

For a District ancestor before 1846, which side of the river they lived on decides which state's law governed them. The rules on dower, inheritance shares, tithables, wills, and marriage differed on the two sides, so a record from 1820 means different things depending on the county.

Alexandria County went back to Virginia by the retrocession act of 1846, and from then on the District was Maryland-derived throughout². Work in the retroceded area after 1846 follows Virginia law, and the records are in Virginia.

Maryland and Virginia both kept legislating after 1801, but only Congress could change District law. The question is always what the parent state's law said in February 1801, and what Congress did to it afterward.

A common law steadily rewritten by Congress

Congress replaced inherited rules with its own over time. These dates make useful anchors, because each marks a change visible in the records:

• 1801 — the District's own courts opened, and probate and land records begin to be kept in the District.
• 1846 — Alexandria County left the District.
• 1862 — slavery ended in the District, and the racial bars on marriage and on giving evidence fell with it³.
• 1869 — married women were given property of their own⁴.
• 1901 — the first Code of Law for the District gathered the scattered rules into one volume, and abolished the private examination of a wife on a deed⁵.
• 1927 — women became eligible for jury service⁶.

Probate — the proving of a will in court — belonged to the Orphans' Court, built on the Maryland model, which also appointed and supervised guardians⁷. Wills, administrations, guardian bonds, and estate accounts therefore sit together in one series through 1950.

Legal Age of Adulthood

Majority at twenty-one

Full legal age in the District was 21, for both men and women, throughout the period. The rule came from the common law, and it arrived with the Maryland and Virginia law continued by the Organic Act⁸. Anyone under 21 was an "infant" in legal language, even a 20-year-old.

Majority was the same for both sexes. Three neighboring ages did differ by sex, and are easy to mistake for majority: the marrying age, the age to make a will, and the age at which guardianship of the person ended. Each is set out below.

A minor's legal capacity

A minor could own property of any kind. What the law limited was the minor's power to give it away or sell it:

• A deed made by a minor was voidable, meaning it stood as a valid deed until the minor chose to undo it. The minor could disaffirm it within a reasonable time after turning 21⁹.
• A minor's contracts could likewise be avoided by the minor.
• Where a minor's land had to be sold, the sale went through a court proceeding, with a guardian acting and the court approving. A minor over fourteen answered the petition in person, under oath¹⁰.

A minor therefore appears in the land records through a guardian and a court order rather than through an ordinary deed.

Marriage

Who was old enough to marry

Through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth the common-law ages governed on both sides of the river: a boy could marry at 14, a girl at 12¹¹.

Congress raised them by two years in 1902, declaring the age of consent to marriage to be 16 for males and 14 for females. The rule arrived as an amendment rather than with the Code itself: the Code of Law for the District of Columbia, which Congress enacted in 1901, left the marrying age to the common law, and the amending act of 30 June 1902 added the paragraph that set one¹². A marriage below that age was voidable rather than void: it stood unless someone went to court to have it declared a nullity. That suit could be brought for the young party by a next friend — an adult who sues on a child's behalf — or by a parent or guardian, and it was closed to anyone who had knowingly contracted the marriage while fully capable of doing so¹³. In practice an ancestor's underage marriage was almost certainly valid.

Congress raised the ages again in 1937, to 18 for males and 16 for females, and provided that a license could not issue until three days had elapsed from the date of the application. The act passed on 12 August 1937 and took effect on the thirtieth day afterward, so the new rules govern marriages from 11 September 1937¹⁴. On District marriage papers from that date, the three-day gap between the application and the license is the waiting period, not a clerical delay.

Parental consent

No law required a parent's consent in the District before 1901, and that is worth knowing before you go looking for one. The Maryland marriage act of 1777, carried in by the Organic Act, called for a license from the clerk or the publication of banns — the public announcement of an intended marriage on three successive Sundays — and it listed the degrees of kinship that barred a marriage, but it set no marrying age and asked for no consent. The compilation of District law Congress printed in 1875 is the same: it regulates who could be licensed to perform a marriage, the wording of the license, and the minister's return, and nothing else¹⁵. A District marriage paper from those years will therefore show no filed consent, whatever the couple's ages.

The 1901 Code set the consent line above the marrying age, and set it differently for each sex. A man under 21, or a woman under 18, needed consent before the clerk would issue a license — unless that person had been married before. Consent came from the father; if there was no father, from the mother; and if neither, from the guardian. It could be given in person to the clerk, or by a written instrument attested by a witness¹⁶. The clerk filed it with the license application.

The gap between the two ages is what makes these papers useful. A woman of 19 married on her own; a man of 19 could not. A filed consent for a groom therefore places him under 21, and its absence places him at 21 or over, or previously married. The consent also names the parent or guardian who gave it, which is often the only document tying a young bride to her father.

A marriage without a ceremony

Washington DC recognized common-law marriage, which sets the District apart from most of its neighbors. A couple became lawfully married by agreeing, in words of the present tense, to be husband and wife from that moment, and then living together as husband and wife. No license, no minister, no ceremony, and no minimum period of living together were required. The Court of Appeals settled the point in 1931, holding that such a marriage was good in the District because no statute here made a ceremony essential¹⁷. The court treated the rule as law that had been in force all along.

A valid District marriage may therefore have generated no record at all. Where a couple appear as husband and wife in the census, in deeds, and in probate papers but no license can be found, a common-law marriage is the ordinary explanation. Proof of one was made by reputation, by the couple's own declarations, and by their conduct.

The District also honored a marriage that was valid where it was contracted, so a couple married in Maryland or Virginia and living in Washington were married in the eyes of District law. One limit applied: a marriage that District law forbade, entered into elsewhere by people who kept their District domicile, was illegal here and could be decreed void as if it had been celebrated here¹⁸.

Void and voidable marriages

A marriage was void from the beginning, without any decree, where either party had a husband or wife still living, and where the parties were within the prohibited degrees of kindred — too closely related by blood or by marriage. The Code lists those degrees in full, and their nullity could be shown in any proceeding¹⁹.

A separate and shorter list covered marriages that were valid until a court said otherwise, and void only from the date of the decree: where a party was under the marrying age, was mentally incapable in the language of the statute, was physically incapable of the marriage, or where consent had been procured by force or fraud²⁰.

Enslaved people and people of color

Enslaved people had no legal capacity to marry, so no civil marriage record exists for them before emancipation²¹. Their unions were recognized by their churches and communities but not by the courts, and could be broken at any time by sale.

The Maryland statutes barring marriage between white people and people of color were carried into Washington County by the Organic Act, and Virginia's equivalent ban applied in Alexandria County. Under the Maryland acts the officiant who joined a white person to an enslaved person of color forfeited five thousand pounds of tobacco; on an intermarriage the free person of color became a slave for life, and the white party a servant for seven years²².

Congress never enacted a racial marriage bar of its own for the District, and the inherited Maryland prohibition fell in 1862. The act ending slavery in the District repealed all Maryland law in force there that was inconsistent with it²³, and a companion act of the same session placed all people of color under the same laws as free white persons²⁴.

From 1862 onward the only marriages the District forbade were bigamous ones and those within the prohibited degrees of kindred. The 1901 Code carried that forward, listing the kinship bars and no racial category¹⁹. Bills to impose a District ban were introduced in Congress several times in the early twentieth century and none passed. Interracial couples from surrounding states therefore married in Washington, and their licenses are in the District's records rather than in their home counties.

Marriages formed under slavery

Two statutory rules govern the marriages of formerly enslaved people, and they are the most useful provisions in the Code for African American research in the District.

The first covers couples in the District itself. All colored persons in the District who, before their actual emancipation, had agreed to occupy the relation of husband and wife, and were cohabiting as such or in any way recognizing that relation on 25 July 1866, are deemed husband and wife, whether or not the rites of marriage had ever been celebrated, with all the rights and duties of that relation as if they had been duly married according to law. All their children are legitimate, born before or after that date. Where the couple had stopped living together before that date because the woman had died or for any other cause, all the children of the woman whom the man recognized as his are legitimate²⁵.

The second reaches marriages formed outside the District. The children of any marriage of colored persons entered into by a custom then prevailing in any State are legitimate for all purposes of descent and inheritance within the District, and inherit from their parents and from those the parents could inherit from²⁶. Because so many of the District's Black residents came from Maryland and Virginia, this is the rule that carries a marriage contracted elsewhere under slavery into a District estate.

Both rules work without any document, so the District produced no cohabitation register of the kind several southern states created after the war. The relation is proved by reputation, declarations, and conduct.

Property Ownership

Which men could own land

The right to buy, hold, and sell land belonged to every free man in the District, of any race. The right rested on being free, and on that alone: neither the Maryland acts continued in 1801 nor the ordinances of the two city corporations touched it, and from 1862 people of color stood under the same laws as free white persons²⁷²⁴. Free Black, mixed-race, and Indian men held land in Georgetown, Washington, and the county throughout the period, and the deed books record their purchases and sales.

Enslaved men had no legal capacity to own property of any kind. Anything in their possession belonged in law to the enslaver, and land they lived on or worked belonged to the enslaver. That disability ended on 16 April 1862, when Congress freed everyone still held in the District and compensated loyal owners up to $300 for each person freed³; a supplemental act that July let the people freed file on their own behalf where the owner would not²⁸. The petitions and schedules filed under those acts name close to three thousand people, usually with an age, a physical description, and an account of how the owner acquired them.

A foreign-born man's right turned on citizenship, and the rule reversed itself in 1902. At common law an alien could buy land and keep it until the government moved against him, but could not take land by inheritance. The Code as amended in 1902 turned that around: a man who was not a citizen, and had not lawfully declared his intention to become one, could no longer acquire and own real estate in the District at all — except land he took by inheritance²⁹. Naturalization lifted the disability under either rule, which is why a naturalization paper so often explains why a man's landholding starts when it does.

Free people of color

Free people of color could own land, and did, throughout the period. The restrictions fell on the freedoms around ownership rather than on ownership itself, and the city corporations rather than Congress imposed them. From 1827 every free person of color living in Washington — males of sixteen and upwards, females of fourteen and upwards — had to show the Register of the corporation satisfactory evidence of a title to freedom, together with a list of the names, ages, and sex of everyone of color below those ages living in the house, and take out a written permit authorizing residence³⁰. From 1836 the newly manumitted, and anyone who had not complied with the earlier act, also had to enter bond with five sureties in the penalty of one thousand dollars for good and orderly conduct, renewed every year³¹. The right to buy, hold, and sell land stood apart from all of it, and the deed books record free families of color doing all three.

The permits and bonds produced the registers of free Black residents, which give a person's name, age, and physical description and the evidence of freedom relied on — a manumission deed, a will, a birth to a free mother, or the sureties who vouched for them. Because the registration ages were sixteen and fourteen, younger children appear in the household list rather than as registrants.

Single women and widows

A single woman or widow — a feme sole, "woman alone" — could buy, own, sell, mortgage, sue, and be sued exactly as a man could³². A woman transacting freely and in her own name in the District deed books is almost always unmarried or widowed.

Married women before 1869

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. Her husband took the rents and profits of her land and owned her wages outright, and her contracts had no force on their own. Her own land could be sold only if she joined in the deed and was examined separately³³. Families with means worked around this by settling property in a trust for her "sole and separate use," a private arrangement that gave her by deed what the law would later give her by statute.

Married women after 1869

Congress gave married women in the District a separate estate by the act of 10 April 1869. Property a woman owned at her marriage, and property she acquired afterward other than from her husband, was hers to hold as absolutely as if she were unmarried, free from her husband's debts, and she could contract and sue in her own name in matters relating to it³⁴. The Supreme Court read the act in 1873 and confirmed its reach³⁵.

The change is visible in the deed books. Before 1869 a wife appears in a deed chiefly to release her dower in her husband's land; after 1869 she appears as an owner selling her own.

Her contractual power was completed in two later steps. An act of 1896 broadened it³⁶, and the 1901 Code let married women engage in any business and contract as freely as if unmarried — while keeping one bar, on contracting as surety, guarantor, or accommodation party. Congress removed that last restriction by the act of 28 May 1926³⁷.

One limit ran the whole way through. A married woman held and disposed of her property as fully as if she were unmarried, but any disposition of her real or personal property by a married woman under twenty-one was void³⁸. A married minor's own deed is therefore worth no more than a single minor's.

When a wife had to sign her husband's deed

The driver is dower: a widow's life estate in one-third of her husband's land. A life estate means the use of the land for her lifetime — the rents, the crops, the right to live there — while ownership passed to the heirs. She could not sell it, and at her death it ended. Dower in the District attached to land the husband held at any time during the marriage, whether or not he still held it at his death, and reached land he held by equitable as well as legal title³⁹. Curtesy was the husband's version: where a child had been born of the marriage capable of inheriting, a widower kept the use of his late wife's land for life⁴⁰.

Because dower attached during the marriage, a buyer taking land from a married man needed the wife to give it up, or he took the land subject to her claim. How she gave it up changed in 1901, and the change divides District deed research into two periods.

Under the earlier rule the officer taking the acknowledgment had a duty to examine her privily and apart from her husband and to explain the deed to her fully; if she then acknowledged it as her act and declared that she had signed willingly and did not wish to retract it, he certified that on the deed⁴¹. The Supreme Court held in 1883 that such a certificate stands against a mere conflict of evidence and can be overturned only on proof clearly and fully showing it false or fraudulent⁴¹. A wife's later denial did not undo it.

The 1901 Code replaced that procedure with an ordinary acknowledgment. A wife of not less than eighteen years of age wishing to release her dower acknowledged the deed in the same form as any other grantor, and her acknowledgment was certified in the same way. From the amendment of 30 June 1902 she could do so either by joining in her husband's deed or by a separate deed, executed anywhere⁴².

Two research consequences follow. On a deed before 1901, the privy-examination certificate proves the grantor was married that day and names his wife, and its absence points to a single or widowed man. From 1902 that inference no longer holds, because her release may sit in the deed books as a separate instrument rather than on the face of his deed.

Certificates drawn up in the wrong form were later fixed by statute. The 1901 Code listed seven kinds of faulty deed and acknowledgment recorded before the Code took effect and declared them good, so long as the people relying on them were actually in possession of the land. One of the seven was a deed acknowledged by a married woman where the officer had not followed the prescribed wording. A single condition attached: if the certificate was made before 10 April 1869, it still had to say on its face that she was examined "apart" or "privily" from her husband⁴³. An old certificate in an odd form is therefore not a gap in the title, provided that much appears on it.

Where land was conveyed to a husband and wife together, they took it as an estate by the entirety, and on the death of either the survivor held the whole⁴⁴. No probate record was created when the first spouse died, because nothing passed by inheritance — a common reason a widow's ownership appears in the record with no estate file behind it.

Dower and curtesy both survived to 1950 and were abolished only in 1957⁴⁵.

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. Selling it was the constraint. A minor's own deed was voidable⁹, so in practice a minor's land was managed by a guardian and any sale went through a court proceeding, with the proceeds accounted for to the Orphans' Court¹⁰. Own at any age; sell 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. A deed was made ready for recording by being acknowledged by the grantor before a judge, clerk, justice of the peace, notary public, or the recorder of deeds⁴⁶, or proved by a subscribing witness — a witness who had signed it. Competency, not age, was the test. In practice deed witnesses were adults, since a witness might have to come into court years later to prove the deed.

Inheritance

Two separate systems

When a person died without a will — intestate — the District divided the estate under two separate systems, one for land and one for everything else, and they worked differently:

• Land passed directly to the heirs at the moment of death, under the rules of descent. No administrator handled it and it did not wait on the estate being settled.
• Personal property — money, livestock, furniture, debts owed to the deceased, and before 1862 enslaved people — passed through an administrator appointed by the Orphans' Court, after the debts were paid.

The two systems ran side by side until well after 1950, so land and goods from one estate can pass to different people.

Who inherited the land

On the death of a person who owned land outright — in fee simple, meaning full ownership with nothing limiting who could inherit it — and left no will, the land descended to the children and their descendants, equally⁴⁷. Sons and daughters took alike, and the children of a dead child divided their parent's share between them⁴⁸. Two or more heirs held it as tenants in common, each owning an undivided share of the whole rather than a marked-off piece of ground.

Equal division ran the whole way through. Both parent states had ended primogeniture — the rule that the eldest son took all the land — before the District existed: Virginia by the descents act of October 1785⁴⁹, Maryland by its own descents act of the following year⁵⁰. Those two acts governed District descent from 1801, the Maryland act in Washington County and the Virginia act in Alexandria County, and the 1901 Code carried the same rule forward.

The widow's interest in the land was dower, the life estate in one-third described above. She held the use of that third for life while the children held the ownership, which is why a widow so often appears in the record holding land she does not own.

The widow's share of the personal property

The shares came from the Maryland testamentary act of 1798, which the District carried in from Maryland in 1801 and kept. Next of kin means the nearest blood relatives — parents, then brothers and sisters, then outward.

Where there was no widow, or beyond her share, the surplus went to the children equally, with the children of a dead child taking their parent's part. A child who had already been given land or goods by the parent during the parent's lifetime — an advancement — had that gift counted against their share, and the widow gained nothing by the counting⁵¹. Getting this right can make or break a family reconstruction built from an estate division: a widow taking a third of the goods tells you there were surviving children even where the account does not name them.

In Alexandria County between 1801 and 1846 the Virginia rule governed. The fractions were the same, but the widow took only the use for her life of any enslaved people falling in her share, and the rest of the estate went to whoever would have taken the land rather than to a fixed list of next of kin⁵².

A widow who disliked her husband's will

Anything a husband left his wife by will, land or goods, counted in place of her dower and her share of the personal estate unless the will said otherwise. To escape it she filed a written renunciation in the probate court, in a form the statute sets out, within six months after administration could be granted on her husband's estate. Renouncing gave her one-third of the personal estate after debts, and no more, together with her dower. She had to renounce the whole provision, not part of it⁵³.

The renunciation is a separate document filed with the will, and it is worth looking for: it establishes that the widow was living at that date and acting for herself. Note the fraction — a renouncing widow took one-third of the goods even where an intestate widow in her position would have taken one-half.

In Alexandria County the Virginia rule gave her a year from her husband's death, and she could renounce by deed executed before two credible witnesses as well as in court. She then took a life interest in one-third of the enslaved people her husband died possessed of, and such share of his other personal estate as if he had died intestate, as her absolute property⁵⁴. A Virginia renunciation may therefore sit in a deed book rather than a will book.

How a minor's inheritance was handled

A minor inherited immediately — title to land passed to the heirs the moment the ancestor died, whatever their age. Managing that inheritance fell to a guardian of the estate, appointed by the Orphans' Court whenever land descended or was devised to a minor, or a minor became entitled to a share of someone's personal estate, to a gift under a will, or to property by gift or purchase⁵⁵. The guardian gave bond, accounted for the property, and handed it over with a formal receipt when the minor came of age.

That final account is one of the most valuable documents in District genealogy. It dates the minor's coming of age, and therefore places a birth year within a year or so, and it frequently reveals a young woman's married surname, because she receipts for her share under her new name.

A guardian was appointed chiefly because a minor owned property. Where a child inherited nothing, often no guardianship record was created at all, and the absence of a guardian file is not evidence that both parents were living. "Orphan" in these records means a child whose father has died; the mother may well be living. The father and mother were the natural guardians of the person of their children, and on the death of either the natural guardianship devolved on the other; a parent who left children property could appoint a guardian of that property by deed or will, subject to the court's approval⁵⁶.

At fourteen a minor was entitled to select and nominate their own guardian, and a minor given a guardian earlier could choose a new one on reaching fourteen, subject to the court approving the person's character and competency. Where a new guardian was chosen and approved, the previous one settled a final account and turned the estate over⁵⁷. A guardianship record in which the child chooses is therefore evidence the child had reached 14, and a mid-minority final account may mark a change of guardian rather than a coming of age.

Guardianship ended at different ages depending on which guardianship it was, and the distinction matters for dating a record. Guardianship of the person — custody and upbringing — ceased at 21 for a boy and at 18, or on marriage, for a girl⁵⁸. Guardianship of the estate ran to 21 for both sexes: a married woman under 21 could not dispose of her property, an infant wife stood under the ordinary disabilities of infancy, and a young woman who married could ask the court to appoint her husband guardian of her estate, which presumes the guardianship continued⁵⁹. A final account for a young woman therefore places her at 21, not 18.

Those ages are the Code's. Under the Maryland rule that governed before it, the court appointed a guardian where land descended or was devised to a male under 21 or a female under 16, or where such a child became entitled to a share of an estate or a gift under a will; the guardianship ran to 21 for a boy and to 16, or marriage, for a girl⁶⁰. A guardianship closed on a girl of 16 is regular in the earlier decades.

Children born outside marriage

At common law a child born outside marriage was filius nullius, "nobody's child," and could inherit from no one. The District, following Maryland, let the child take from the mother, from other such children of hers, and from their descendants, as if born in lawful wedlock; and where such a child died leaving no descendants, brothers, or sisters, the mother took as next of kin, and after her death her next of kin took⁶¹. The same rule governed real estate, with a proviso barring the child from taking land by descent from a mother who was mentally incapable of making a will and remained so until her death⁶².

Inheritance from the father followed only on legitimation, and that took two things together: the father afterward married the mother, and he acknowledged the child as his. Where both happened, the child was legitimated and could inherit from the father and pass property on as though born in wedlock⁶³. The acknowledgment did not have to be a formal document, so it is often proved from ordinary family evidence rather than from a court record.

Alexandria County ran on the Virginia descents act between 1801 and 1846, and it reached the same two results in almost the same words: such a child could inherit from the mother and pass property on through her as if born in wedlock, and a later marriage of the parents, coupled with the father's recognition, legitimated the child⁶⁴.

Children of couples who had been enslaved took under the separate rules described under Marriage, which made them legitimate as to both parents without any document²⁵.

Making a will and serving as executor

In the District from 1901 the age to make a will divided by sex, not by the kind of property. A man had to be 21; a woman had to be 18. The same figures covered land and personal property alike, and the maker also had to be of sound and disposing mind and capable of executing a valid deed or contract⁶⁵. A woman of 19 could make a valid will in the District; her brother of 19 could not.

Before 1901 the ages depended on which side of the river the testator lived on. Under the Maryland rule that governed Washington County from 1801, the ages of 21 and 18 attached to a will passing land, while a will of personal property called only for a sound and disposing mind and the capacity to make a valid deed or contract — which left the common-law ages of 14 for a boy and 12 for a girl⁶⁶. A will of goods proved for a teenager in that county before 1901 is regular.

Alexandria County ran on the Virginia act of October 1785 between 1801 and 1846, and its ages were different again. A will of land could be made by any person of 21 or over who was of sound mind and not a married woman — so 21 for a man and for a single woman alike, and no age at all for a wife, who could not make one. For goods the line was 18. Only a will "not wholly written by himself" needed two witnesses, so a will of land written out in the testator's own hand was good with no attesting witnesses at all⁶⁷. An unwitnessed holograph from that county in those years is regular; so is the absence of any will by a married woman.

A will had to be in writing, signed by the person making it — the testator — or by someone else in his presence and at his direction, and attested and subscribed in his presence by at least two credible witnesses, or it was utterly void⁶⁸. A handwritten will needed those two witnesses just as any other did, so a holographic will — one written wholly in the testator's own hand — offered for probate without witnesses failed. An oral will was good only for a soldier in actual service or a mariner at sea, disposing of personal property, and had to be proved by two witnesses present at the making and reduced to writing within ten days⁶⁹.

A witness could be of any age if competent. Where a witness was also given something by the will, the Maryland-derived rule made the devise — a gift of land by will — void, which left the witness with nothing to gain and so competent to prove the will; that statute reached wills of land only, so on a will of personal property an interested witness was treated as no witness at all and the will had to be proved as if unattested by them⁷⁰.

The age to serve as executor or executrix was 18, not 21. Letters — the court's written authority to act for an estate — were withheld from anyone under eighteen, and also from a person convicted of an infamous offense, a person the law of the day treated as mentally incapable, or an alien⁷¹. Where letters went to someone between 18 and 21, the bond he gave bound him exactly as if he had been of full age⁷². Both rules came in from Maryland in 1801 and ran unchanged through the period⁷³, so an estate administered by an eighteen-year-old son is regular in any decade.

Taxation

What was taxed

The District taxed property, not people. Its revenue rested on a tax on real estate and a tax on personal property, and Congress confirmed that footing in 1874 when it laid a tax on all real estate in the District except that belonging to the United States, the District itself, and churches, schools, and charities⁷⁴. The Supreme Court upheld it four years later⁷⁵. A District income tax came only in 1939⁷⁶.

Congress never laid a poll or head tax on District residents, and the surviving District tax records are assessment books organized by square and lot — by property rather than by person. There is no District equivalent of the southern poll lists that serve as census substitutes.

The City of Washington is the exception, and it is a useful one. The charter Congress granted the city in 1848 let the corporation collect a school tax of one dollar a year from every free white male citizen of twenty-one and upwards, ordered the elected assessors to return the names of everyone liable to it, and made payment of that tax a condition of voting in city elections⁷⁷. From 1848, then, the corporation was keeping an annual list of white men of 21 and over living in the city — a poll list in everything but name, and the closest thing to one the District produced. The corporation records are described in the National Archives guide cited under Sources. Georgetown, the county outside the two cities, and every resident of color fall outside it.

Congress has always held the power to tax the District, and the Supreme Court settled that early⁷⁸. District residents paid federal taxes throughout while holding no vote in Congress.

Maryland tithables before 1801

For Georgetown and the rest of Washington County before 1801, the useful lists are Maryland's. Colonial Maryland taxed by the head rather than by assessment, and the taxable person was called a tithable. After several experiments the Assembly settled the rule in 1676 and reenacted it in 1692: all white males and all enslaved people, male or female, were subject to the poll tax between the ages of sixteen and sixty⁷⁹.

The sex line is the useful fact. White women were not tithable; enslaved women of sixteen and over were. A household showing taxable women is a household with enslaved women in it, and the count of tithables in a Maryland list is not a count of the household.

Maryland abolished the poll tax in its Declaration of Rights of 1776, calling it grievous and oppressive, and laid its first statewide property tax the following year⁸⁰. By the time the District was formed the Maryland side was already taxing property rather than heads.

Virginia tithables in Alexandria County

Virginia ran a comparable system on the other side of the river, and it ran in two stages. The act of October 1705 made tithable all male persons of sixteen and over, and all women of color and Indian women of sixteen and over who were not free⁸¹. A free woman of color was therefore exempt under that act, and a household of free people of color was taxed on its men alone.

An act of 1723 changed that. It made free people of color and Indians above sixteen — except tributary Indians — and their wives tithable, and required heads of households to list by name everyone between the ages of ten and sixteen as well⁸². From 1723 onward, then, free Black families can be identified in Virginia lists by the taxation of their women, because white women were never tithable. Ages were reckoned as of 9 June each year, so a list reflects ages that summer.

Virginia replaced the tithable system with personal property and land tax lists in 1782, and those are the lists that cover Alexandria County through its years in the District⁸³. Virginia also required free Black residents to register, which produced the free Black registers kept in Alexandria; those registers continue after the 1846 retrocession under Virginia law.

Taxable ages at a glance

Courts

Jury service

A juror had to be a citizen of the United States, a resident of the District, over twenty-one and under sixty-five years of age, able to read and write and to understand the English language, and a good and lawful man who had never been convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor involving moral turpitude⁸⁴. Any man who met those tests could serve whether or not he owned land, so a District jury list is a list of qualified residents rather than of property holders, and says little about a man's wealth.

Most of that list is older than the Code. The tests of citizenship, residence, age, and character had stood since the act of 16 June 1862 and were carried into the Revised Statutes for the District, so the same 21-to-65 bracket governed from the Civil War onward. What the Code added in 1901 was the requirement that a juror be able to read and write and understand English⁸⁵.

For the years before 1862 there is no statute to quote. Congress set no qualifications of its own until that act, and every jury provision in the 1875 compilation traces back to it or later. Juries in the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia were summoned under the practice the court inherited in 1801, so who actually served has to be read from the court's own venire lists and jury records rather than from a printed law⁸⁶. Those records survive in Record Group 21 at the National Archives.

The list was made in an unusual way. Three officers — the clerk of the court, the United States marshal, and the collector of taxes for the District — formed a commission to draw up the jury list and fix its size, choosing jurors as evenly as they could from citizens in the different parts of the District. The names went on slips of paper into a sealed box, and panels were drawn from it⁸⁷. Where a panel ran short, the court could draw further names or order the marshal to summon talesmen — bystanders brought in on the spot to complete the jury — who had to meet the same qualifications⁸⁸.

That literacy requirement did the work of exclusion, and it arrived at the height of the disfranchisement campaign: from 1901 a man who could not read and write English was off the list whatever else he was.

Jury service was limited to men until 1927, when Congress added a new section providing that no person should be disqualified as a juror or jury commissioner by reason of sex, that the qualification and exemption rules applied to women as well as men, and that service should not be compulsory on any woman⁶. Women appear on District jury lists from 1927, but sparsely for some years, because many asked to be excused.

Black men became legally eligible for District juries in the 1860s. The act of 21 May 1862 placed people of color under the same laws as free white persons²⁴, and the qualifications Congress wrote a month later, carried forward into the Revised Statutes, name citizenship, residence, age, and character and no racial category at all⁸⁵. Eligibility and practice were not the same thing, and exclusion by other means persisted.

Criminal responsibility

Before 1906 the common-law ages governed:

• Under 7 — a child was legally incapable of committing a crime.
• 7 to 14 — presumed incapable, a presumption the prosecution could overcome by proving the child knew right from wrong and understood that the act was wrong.
• 14 and over — full criminal responsibility, tried and punished as an adult.

Congress created a Juvenile Court for the District in 1906 and gave it jurisdiction over children under 17⁸⁹. A child within that age was dealt with as a delinquent rather than convicted of a crime, and the resulting file is a juvenile court record rather than a criminal one. The age line was raised later.

Witnesses

A witness of any age could testify, if he or she understood the obligation of an oath and could relate what happened. Neither the Code nor the earlier compilation set a minimum age⁹⁰. The trial judge examined a child personally before allowing the testimony. A very young child's uncorroborated word carried little weight, but that was a question of how much the jury should believe rather than whether the child could speak at all.

Women could testify. The competency rules turned on other matters — chiefly being the surviving party to a transaction with someone since dead, who could not answer — rather than on age or sex⁹⁰. The limits on a wife's evidence were the general common-law rules about husbands and wives testifying for or against each other, which statute relaxed over the period.

People of color as witnesses

Under the Maryland law carried into Washington County in 1801, the evidence of an enslaved person, and of a free person of color born of a white woman during the time of servitude, was not received in any matter in which a white person was concerned. Where other sufficient evidence was wanting, the court or magistrate could hear it at its discretion, provided the testimony did not extend to depriving any of them of life or limb⁹¹. A separate Maryland act barred a manumitted person from giving evidence against a white person, and from serving as competent evidence to free another person petitioning for freedom⁹² — a bar that shaped the freedom suits filed in the District's courts. Virginia law imposed comparable restrictions in Alexandria County.

Congress removed these in 1862, and the supplemental act of 12 July that year settled it in general terms: in all judicial proceedings in the District, no witness was to be excluded on account of color⁹³. The companion act of May 1862 had already placed people of color under the same laws as free white persons²⁴.

Sources & Where to Verify

Codes and Compilations

• Dorsey, Clement. The Statutory Testamentary Law of Maryland, with the Decisions of the Courts Thereof, Explanatory of the Same. Baltimore: Published by Fielding Lucas, Jr., 1838. The Maryland testamentary law as it stood when it governed Washington County, including the treatment of a subscribing witness who takes under the will. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/statutorytestame00dorsiala (accessed 3 August 2026).
• Hening, William Waller. The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619. Vol. 12. Richmond: Printed for the Editor, by George Cochran, 1823. The Virginia acts carried into Alexandria County in 1801: the descents act of October 1785 that abolished primogeniture and provided for children born outside marriage (pp. 138–40), and the act of the same session on wills, distribution, and administration, which sets the ages for making a will, the holograph rule, the interested-witness rule, the widow's shares, and her renunciation (pp. 140–47). Volumes 3 and 4, cited under Taxation for the tithable acts of 1705 and 1723, were issued separately and carry their own imprints. Digital images. Internet Archive. Vol. 12, https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge01colgoog (accessed 3 August 2026).
• Meyers, William F., and Edward H. Thomas, comps. The Code of Law for the District of Columbia, Enacted March 3, 1901; Amended by the Acts Approved January 31 and June 30, 1902, and Amended by Further Acts of Congress to and Including March 4, 1911. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1911. This printing shows amended text in italics and repealed text in brackets, so it also records what the 1902 amendments changed. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/codelawfordistr00colugoog (accessed 3 August 2026).
• The Code of Law for the District of Columbia. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902. The Code as first enacted, useful for establishing which provisions stood in 1901 before the amendments of that year and the next. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/codelawfordistr00brangoog (accessed 3 August 2026).
• Torbert, Wm. S., ed. The Code of Law for the District of Columbia … Amended by Further Acts of Congress to and Including March 4, 1919. Washington, D.C.: William L. Bradley, 1919. A later printing of the same Code, useful for tracing amendments down to 1919. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/codelawfordistr01colugoog (accessed 3 August 2026).
• Revised Statutes of the United States Relating to the District of Columbia and Post Roads, Passed at the First Session of the Forty-third Congress, 1873–'74. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1875. The compilation of District law in force between the 1801 inheritance and the 1901 Code, and the source for the conveyancing, privy-examination, marriage-licensing, jury, and witness sections that governed before 1901. Printed as part 2 of volume 18 of the Statutes at Large. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/us_stat_18 (accessed 3 August 2026).
• Snethen, Worthington G. The Black Code of the District of Columbia, in Force September 1st, 1848. New York: Published for the A. & F. Anti-Slavery Society, by William Harned, 1848. Collects the Maryland acts and the Washington and Georgetown corporation ordinances bearing on enslaved people and free people of color, each with its date. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/blackcodeofdistr00wash (accessed 3 August 2026).
• The Slavery Code of the District of Columbia, Together with Notes and Judicial Decisions Explanatory of the Same. Washington: L. Towers & Co., Printers, 1862. Arranged in three parts — the acts of Congress, the old Maryland laws in force at cession and continued by the act of 27 February 1801, and the acts of the corporation of Washington. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/08006783/ (accessed 3 August 2026).

Session Laws and Colonial Records

• Archives of Maryland. The Maryland acts in full. Each volume is paged, and each page has its own address, so a statement can be traced to the page it came from. The acts used here: the act of May 1751 laying out Georgetown, vol. 46, pp. 630–35 (https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000046/html/am46--630.html); the poll-tax acts fixing the tithable ages, vol. I, p. 449, vol. II, pp. 135–36, 399, 538–39 (https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000002/html/am2--538.html), and vol. XIII, p. 538; the marriage act of 1777 and the other session laws of 1763–1784, vol. 203 (https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000203/html/index.html); and the descents act of 1786, vol. 204, pp. 184–88 (https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000204/html/am204--184.html). The full list of volumes is at https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/html/volumes.html. Archives of Maryland Online, Maryland State Archives (accessed 3 August 2026).
• Shepherd, Samuel, comp. The Statutes at Large of Virginia, from October Session 1792, to December Session 1806. Richmond: Printed by S. Shepherd, 1835. 3 vols. Continues Hening to the eve of the District's creation. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/statutesatlargeo01virg (accessed 3 August 2026).
• United States Statutes at Large. The acts of Congress that made District law: the Residence Act (1 Stat. 130), the Organic Act of 1801 (2 Stat. 103), the retrocession act (9 Stat. 35), the Washington city charter of 1848 that laid the school tax (9 Stat. 223), the emancipation acts of 1862 (12 Stat. 376, 407, 538), the married women's property act of 1869 (16 Stat. 45), the government act of 1874 (18 Stat. 116), the married women's rights act of 1896 (29 Stat. 193), the Code of Law for the District of Columbia (31 Stat. 1189), the amending act of 1902 (32 Stat. 520), the Juvenile Court Act (34 Stat. 73), the married women's contracts act of 1926 (44 Stat. 676), the jury act of 1927 (44 Stat. 1249), the marriage act of 1937 (50 Stat. 626), and the revenue act of 1939 (53 Stat. 1085). Digital images of the individual volumes cited here, Internet Archive: vol. 9, https://archive.org/details/us_stat_9; vol. 18, https://archive.org/details/us_stat_18; vol. 32, https://archive.org/details/us_stat_32; vol. 44, https://archive.org/details/us_stat_44; vol. 50, https://archive.org/details/us_stat_50. The full run is at GovInfo, U.S. Government Publishing Office, https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/statute (accessed 3 August 2026).

Court Cases

• Coates v. Watts. 622 A.2d 25 (D.C. 1993).
• Friedenwald v. Friedenwald. 57 App. D.C. 13, 16 F.2d 509 (1926).
• Hoage v. Murch Bros. Construction Co. 60 App. D.C. 218, 50 F.2d 983 (1931). The decision establishing that common-law marriage is valid in the District.
• Loughborough v. Blake. 18 U.S. (5 Wheat.) 317 (1820).
• Sykes v. Chadwick. 85 U.S. (18 Wall.) 141 (1873).
• Thaw v. Ritchie. 136 U.S. 519 (1890).
• Thomas v. Murphy. 107 F.2d 268 (D.C. Cir. 1939).
• United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co. v. Britton. 269 F.2d 249 (D.C. Cir. 1959).
• Welch v. Cook. 97 U.S. 541 (1878).
• Young v. Duvall. 109 U.S. 573 (1883).

Secondary and Reference Works

• Library of Virginia. "Personal Property Tax Records: Timeline of Record Changes." Dates the successive Virginia tithable rules and the 1782 move to personal property and land tax lists, and describes what each list contains. https://lva-virginia.libguides.com/personal-property-tax/tax-changes (accessed 3 August 2026).
• Maryland State Archives. "A Brief History of the Department of Assessments and Taxation." Dates the abolition of the Maryland poll tax in 1776 and the first statewide property tax in 1777. https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/educ/speeches/html/dathistory051402.html (accessed 3 August 2026).
• Maryland State Archives. "Marriage Records." Summarizes the Maryland marriage act of 1777 — license from the clerk or publication of banns, the forbidden degrees of kinship, and the minister's return — and traces the later Maryland changes. https://guide.msa.maryland.gov/pages/viewer.aspx?page=marriage-former (accessed 3 August 2026).
• Maryland State Archives. "Blacks before the Law in Colonial Maryland." Traces the Assembly's settlement of the tithable ages, with citations to the Archives of Maryland volumes. https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/speccol/sc5300/sc5348/html/footnotes2.html (accessed 3 August 2026).
• National Archives and Records Administration. Records of the District Courts of the United States (Record Group 21). The custodian's own description of the Circuit Court and Supreme Court of the District of Columbia records, including the emancipation papers, habeas corpus records, and manumission records. https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/021.html (accessed 3 August 2026).
• National Archives and Records Administration. Records of the Government of the District of Columbia (Record Group 351). Describes the corporation records of Washington and Georgetown, including the free Black registers and the surviving assessment and tax books. https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/351.html (accessed 3 August 2026).
• Provine, Dorothy S. Compensated Emancipation in the District of Columbia: Petitions under the Act of April 16, 1862. Westminster, Md.: Heritage Books, 2005. The published index to the emancipation petitions and schedules.
• Provine, Dorothy S. District of Columbia Free Negro Registers, 1821–1861. 2 vols. Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1996. The published transcription of the free Black registers described under Property Ownership.
• U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for District of Columbia. Bulletin of the Women's Bureau, No. 157-8 (Revised). Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1950. Summarizes the District's law on majority, marriage, married women's property, wills, and jury service with citations to the then-current code, and is worth cross-checking against the statutes. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112101572672 (accessed 3 August 2026).

Citations

1. An Act Concerning the District of Columbia, Act of 27 February 1801, ch. 15, § 1, 2 Stat. 103, continuing the laws of Virginia and of Maryland, as they then existed, in the portions ceded by each; digital images, GovInfo (https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/statute : accessed 3 August 2026). Georgetown was laid out under an act of the Maryland General Assembly of May 1751, printed in Archives of Maryland, vol. 46, pp. 630–35; digital images, Archives of Maryland Online, Maryland State Archives (https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000046/html/am46--630.html : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩
2. Act of 9 July 1846, 9 Stat. 35, retroceding Alexandria County to Virginia; effective on the President's proclamation of 7 September 1846 following the local vote of 1–2 September 1846 ↩
3. An Act for the Release of Certain Persons Held to Service or Labor in the District of Columbia, Act of 16 April 1862, ch. 54, §§ 1–3, 12 Stat. 376, freeing all persons held to service or labor in the District and providing compensation not exceeding $300 for each person freed ↩ ↩
4. Act of 10 April 1869, ch. 23, 16 Stat. 45, “An Act regulating the Rights of Property of Married Women in the District of Columbia”; digital images, GovInfo (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-16/pdf/STATUTE-16-Pg44-4.pdf : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩
5. An Act to Establish a Code of Law for the District of Columbia, Act of 3 March 1901, ch. 854, 31 Stat. 1189; cited throughout from William F. Meyers and Edward H. Thomas, comps., The Code of Law for the District of Columbia, Enacted March 3, 1901 … and Amended by Further Acts of Congress to and Including March 4, 1911 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1911); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/codelawfordistr00colugoog : accessed 3 August 2026). Where the Code as first enacted differs, the text is taken from the 1902 printing (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/codelawfordistr00brangoog : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩
6. Act of 26 February 1927, ch. 220, 44 Stat. 1249, adding § 215a to the Code of Law for the District of Columbia: “Hereafter no person shall be disqualified for service as a juror or jury commissioner by reason of sex but the provisions of law relating to the qualifications of jurors and exemptions from jury duty shall in all cases apply to women as well as to men: Provided, That such service shall not be compulsory on any woman.” Reported as S. Rep. 1514, 69th Cong., 2d sess.; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/us_stat_44 : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩ ↩
7. The Orphans' Court and its probate and guardianship jurisdiction came in with the Maryland testamentary act of 1798, ch. 101, continued by the Organic Act of 1801, 2 Stat. 103 ↩
8. The common-law age of majority, received through the Maryland and Virginia law continued by the Organic Act of 1801, 2 Stat. 103, § 1 ↩
9. The common-law rule that an infant's deed is voidable and may be disaffirmed within a reasonable time after majority; applied in the District in Thaw v. Ritchie, 136 U.S. 519 (1890) ↩ ↩
10. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), §§ 156–161, on the sale or exchange of an infant’s estate: the infant and those who would succeed if he were dead are made parties, a disinterested guardian ad litem answers under oath, and an infant above fourteen answers in proper person under oath; every material fact must be proved by disinterested witnesses, and no sale passes title until reported to and ratified by the court. See also Thaw v. Ritchie, 136 U.S. 519, 535 (1890), on a guardian's sale of a minor's real estate under the Maryland act of 1798, ch. 101, sub-ch. 12, § 10, as continued in the District ↩ ↩
11. The common-law marrying ages of fourteen for a male and twelve for a female, received through the Maryland and Virginia law continued in 1801 ↩
12. Act of 30 June 1902, ch. 1329, 32 Stat. 520, at 543, amending § 1285 of the Code of Law for the District of Columbia by adding the paragraph “Fourth. When either of the parties is under the age of consent, which is hereby declared to be sixteen years of age for males and fourteen for females”; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/us_stat_32 : accessed 3 August 2026). The paragraph is an addition and not a re-enactment: the Code as enacted 3 March 1901 set no marrying age; the 1911 printing carries the citation to 32 Stat., Part I, p. 543 against the clause; and the amending act of 1937 recites the derivation of the paragraph it replaced as “31 Stat. 1391; 32 Stat. 543.” As printed, Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1285, cl. 4 ↩
13. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1286, headed “By whom suit brought” ↩
14. Act of 12 August 1937, ch. 596, 50 Stat. 626 (H.R. 5462, Public No. 265, 75th Cong., 1st sess.), § 1 amending paragraph “Fourth” of § 1285 of the Code of Law for the District of Columbia to declare the age of consent “eighteen years of age for males and sixteen years of age for females”; § 2, “A license to marry shall not be issued until three days have elapsed from date of application for issuance of said license”; § 3, taking effect on the thirtieth day after enactment. Reported as H. Rep. 827 and S. Rep. 1025, 75th Cong., 1st sess.; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/us_stat_50 : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩
15. The Maryland marriage act of the November session of 1777, continued in Washington County by the Organic Act of 1801, 2 Stat. 103. It required a license from the clerk of the county court or the publication of banns on three Sundays in the county where the woman lived, listed the degrees of kindred forbidden to marry, and directed that the ceremony be performed by a Christian minister; it fixed no marrying age and required no consent of a parent or guardian. Printed in Hanson’s Laws of Maryland 1763–1784, Archives of Maryland, vol. 203; digital images, Archives of Maryland Online, Maryland State Archives (https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000203/html/index.html : accessed 3 August 2026); the contents of the act are summarized in Maryland State Archives, “Marriage Records” (https://guide.msa.maryland.gov/pages/viewer.aspx?page=marriage-former : accessed 3 August 2026). The congressional compilation of District law in force in 1874 is to the same effect: Revised Statutes of the United States Relating to the District of Columbia (1875), §§ 718–723, which govern the licensing of ministers, the form of the license, the clerk’s record book, and the minister’s certificate, and set no age and no consent requirement; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/us_stat_18 : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩
16. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1292, headed “Consent of parent or guardian” ↩
17. Hoage v. Murch Bros. Construction Co., 60 App. D.C. 218, 50 F.2d 983, 985 (1931), holding that an agreement per verba de praesenti — in words of the present tense — to be husband and wife, consummated by cohabitation as husband and wife, is a valid marriage unless a statute declares otherwise, and finding no such statute in the District. Contrary dicta in Friedenwald v. Friedenwald, 57 App. D.C. 13, 16 F.2d 509 (1926), cert. denied 273 U.S. 763 (1927), concern a couple who had attempted a ceremonial marriage. The rule was restated in United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co. v. Britton, 269 F.2d 249, 251 (D.C. Cir. 1959), and Coates v. Watts, 622 A.2d 25, 27 (D.C. 1993) ↩
18. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1287, headed “Marriage out of District” ↩
19. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1283, headed “Prohibitions,” listing the degrees of kindred and a subsisting prior marriage, declaring such marriages absolutely void ab initio without being so decreed, and stating no racial restriction; § 1284 allows a decree declaring them void ↩ ↩
20. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1285, headed “When void from date of decree” ↩
21. No Maryland act continued in the District recognized a marriage between enslaved people, and the compilations of the law governing them carry no provision for one: Worthington G. Snethen, The Black Code of the District of Columbia, in Force September 1st, 1848 (New York: Published for the A. & F. Anti-Slavery Society, by William Harned, 1848); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/blackcodeofdistr00wash : accessed 3 August 2026). The point is confirmed by the remedial statute of 1866, which deemed such couples husband and wife “whether the rites of marriage have been celebrated between them or not”: Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1296 ↩
22. Laws of Maryland, 1715, ch. 44, § 24 (penalty of five thousand pounds of tobacco on the officiant), and 1717, ch. 13, § 5 (the free person of color a slave for life, the white party a servant for seven years); printed in Worthington G. Snethen, The Black Code of the District of Columbia, in Force September 1st, 1848 (New York: Published for the A. & F. Anti-Slavery Society, by William Harned, 1848), chs. IX, XIII; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/blackcodeofdistr00wash : accessed 3 August 2026). Continued in Washington County by the Organic Act of 1801, 2 Stat. 103 ↩
23. Act of 16 April 1862, § 12, 12 Stat. 376, repealing all acts of Congress and all laws of the State of Maryland in force in the District inconsistent with the act ↩
24. Act of 21 May 1862, 12 Stat. 407, subjecting persons of color in the District to the same laws as free white persons ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
25. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1296, headed “Slave marriages” ↩ ↩
26. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1297, headed “Colored persons” ↩
27. Nothing in the Maryland acts continued in the District, or in the ordinances of the corporations of Washington and Georgetown, barred a free person of color from buying, holding, or selling land; the restrictions those laws imposed ran to residence, registration, bond, assembly, and testimony. The whole body of that law is collected in Worthington G. Snethen, The Black Code of the District of Columbia, in Force September 1st, 1848 (New York: Published for the A. & F. Anti-Slavery Society, by William Harned, 1848); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/blackcodeofdistr00wash : accessed 3 August 2026), and in The Slavery Code of the District of Columbia, Together with Notes and Judicial Decisions Explanatory of the Same (Washington: L. Towers & Co., Printers, 1862); digital images, Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/item/08006783/ : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩
28. Act of 12 July 1862, 12 Stat. 538, allowing schedules to be filed by the persons freed where the owner had not filed ↩
29. At common law, received with the Maryland and Virginia law continued by the Organic Act of 1801, 2 Stat. 103, an alien could take land by purchase and hold it until the government moved against him, but could not take land by descent. Congress reversed that for the District: Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 396, headed “Real estate,” added by the Act of 30 June 1902, makes it unlawful for a person who is not a citizen of the United States, and has not lawfully declared his intention to become one, to acquire and own real estate in the District, “except such as may be acquired by inheritance,” saving rights secured by treaty and the residences of foreign representatives; §§ 397–398 extend the bar to foreign-controlled corporations and provide for forfeiture. On the escheat of land where no heir capable of inheriting survived, see § 962 ↩
30. Ordinances of the Corporation of Washington, 31 May 1827, §§ 1–2 (evidence of a title to freedom shown to the Register, the ages of sixteen for males and fourteen for females, the list of everyone of color below those ages living in the house, and the written permit under the corporation seal); printed in Snethen, Black Code of the District of Columbia, ch. LXIV, and in The Slavery Code of the District of Columbia, Together with Notes and Judicial Decisions Explanatory of the Same (Washington: L. Towers & Co., Printers, 1862), sec. III; digital images, Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/item/08006783/ : accessed 3 August 2026). The date is 31 May 1827: Snethen gives it throughout, and the supplementary ordinance of 9 November 1836 recites the title of the act it amends as approved May thirty-first, 1827. The 1862 compilation heads one note “Act 21st May, 1827” while twice describing the 1836 ordinances as supplementary to the act of 31 May 1827; the recital in the amending ordinance settles it ↩
31. Ordinances of the Corporation of Washington, 29 October 1836, §§ 1–2; extended to free people of color coming into the city by the ordinance of 9 November 1836, §§ 1–2; printed in Snethen, Black Code of the District of Columbia, ch. LXIV ↩
32. The common-law capacity of an unmarried woman, received with the Maryland and Virginia law continued by the Organic Act of 1801, 2 Stat. 103. The District statutes that later enlarged a married woman's capacity measure it against the same standard, giving her rights “as absolute as if she were unmarried”: Act of 10 April 1869, ch. 23, § 1, 16 Stat. 45; Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1154 ↩
33. The common-law disabilities of coverture, received with the Maryland and Virginia law continued by the Organic Act of 1801, 2 Stat. 103. Their extent can be read from the statutes that removed them, which recite what the wife could not previously do: Act of 10 April 1869, ch. 23, §§ 1–2, 16 Stat. 45 (her property no longer subject to her husband’s disposal or liable for his debts, and her power to contract and sue in her own name); and Revised Statutes of the United States Relating to the District of Columbia (1875), §§ 450–452, on the private examination without which her land could not be conveyed ↩
34. Act of 10 April 1869, ch. 23, §§ 1–2, 16 Stat. 45 ↩
35. Sykes v. Chadwick, 85 U.S. (18 Wall.) 141 (1873) ↩
36. Married Women's Rights Act (District of Columbia), Act of 1 June 1896, ch. 303, 29 Stat. 193 ↩
37. Act of 28 May 1926, ch. 419, 44 Stat. 676 (Public No. 312, 69th Cong., 1st sess.), amending § 1155 of the Code of Law for the District of Columbia by striking out the words “Provided, That no married woman shall have power to make any contract as surety or guarantor or as accommodation drawer, acceptor, maker, or indorser”; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/us_stat_44 : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩
38. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1154, headed “Property of wife”; and see § 1151 (wife’s property exempt from husband’s debts) and § 1157 (an infant wife under the same disabilities as other infants) ↩
39. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1158, headed “Dower” ↩
40. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1159, headed “Estate by the curtesy” ↩
41. Revised Statutes of the United States Relating to the District of Columbia and Post Roads, Passed at the First Session of the Forty-third Congress, 1873–'74 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1875), § 450, requiring the officer, where a married woman is a party to a deed with her husband or is relinquishing dower, to examine her privily and apart from her husband and to explain the deed to her fully, and § 451, on her acknowledgment that she willingly signed and did not wish to retract, the officer's certificate, and the form it takes; the effect of the recorded deed is at § 452; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/us_stat_18 : accessed 3 August 2026). The provision is quoted, and the weight of the certificate settled, in Young v. Duvall, 109 U.S. 573, 574–75 (1883) ↩ ↩
42. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 494, headed “Release of dower,” as amended by the Act of 30 June 1902, 32 Stat. 531, permitting release by a separate deed wherever executed; the original text required the wife to unite in her husband's deed. The form of acknowledgment she follows is at § 493, which prescribes an ordinary acknowledgment and no private examination ↩
43. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 515, headed “Defective acknowledgments,” validating seven classes of deeds and acknowledgments recorded before the adoption of the Code in favor of parties in actual possession, including acknowledgments by married women releasing dower in which the prescribed form was not followed; and § 516, headed “Acknowledgments by married women,” requiring the certificate of a married woman made before 10 April 1869 to show that the acknowledgment was made “apart” or “privily” from her husband, or in words to that effect. The 1869 limitation was inserted into § 516 by the Act of 30 June 1902, 32 Stat. 532, which struck out § 517 entirely — the section under which a wife’s acknowledgment of her husband’s deed barred her dower although she had not executed the deed. The 1911 printing shows § 516 as amended and § 517 in brackets as repealed. The three sections came from Revised Statutes for the District of Columbia (1875), §§ 459–461 ↩
44. The common-law estate by the entirety, received with the Maryland law continued in 1801 and recognized in the District throughout the period ↩
45. Act of 31 August 1957, Pub. L. 85-244, abolishing dower and curtesy in the District for marriages after its effective date ↩
46. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 493, headed “Acknowledgment” ↩
47. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 940, headed “Children”: on the death of a person seized of an estate in fee simple and intestate, the land descends first “To his child or children and their descendants, if any, equally” ↩
48. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 963 (an heir must be in being at the ancestor’s death, with an exception for a child born afterward), § 965 (representation), and § 966 (no estate in coparcenary; heirs take as tenants in common). Where no relations within the fifth degree survive, the surplus goes to the District for the benefit of the poor, § 388 ↩
49. An act directing the course of descents, October 1785, in William Waller Hening, The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, vol. 12 (Richmond: Printed for the editor, by George Cochran, 1823), p. 138; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge01colgoog : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩
50. An Act to direct descents, 1786, ch. XLV, passed 20 January 1787 at the session begun 6 November 1786, reciting that the law of descents “which originated with the feudal system and military tenures, is contrary to justice, and ought to be abolished”; printed in Archives of Maryland, vol. 204, pp. 184–88; digital images, Archives of Maryland Online, Maryland State Archives (https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000204/html/am204--184.html : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩
51. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), §§ 373–379: § 373 (the administrator distributes the surplus once debts are settled, the printed derivation reading “Md. act 1798, ch. 101”), § 374 (widow takes the whole where no child, parent, grandchild, brother or sister, or child of a brother or sister survives), § 375 (widow takes one-third only where a child or the descendant of a child survives), § 376 (widow takes one-half where no child survives but a parent, brother, sister, or child of a brother or sister does), § 378 (children divide equally), and § 379 (representation and advancements). Continued in the District by the Organic Act of 1801, 2 Stat. 103 ↩
52. An act concerning wills, the distribution of intestates' estates, and the duty of executors and administrators, October 1785, § XXV, in Hening, Statutes at Large, vol. 12, p. 146 ↩
53. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1173, headed “Renunciation of bequest,” setting the six-month period, the form of renunciation, and the one-third share “and no more”; with § 1172 (a devise or bequest to the wife taken to be in bar of dower unless the will says otherwise) and §§ 1174–1175 (she must renounce the whole). The printed derivation reads “Md. 1798, ch. 101” ↩
54. Act of October 1785, § XXI, in Hening, Statutes at Large, vol. 12, p. 145 ↩
55. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1127, headed “When guardian of estate is appointed by court”; the guardian of the estate may be a different person from the guardian of the person, and the bond is at § 1131 ↩
56. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1123, headed “Natural guardians,” and § 1124, “Testamentary guardians”; the court’s order of preference in appointing a guardian of the estate is at § 1128 ↩
57. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1130, headed “Consent of infant” ↩
58. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1126, headed “When guardianship ceases,” which by its terms ends the natural or appointive guardianship of the person at twenty-one for a male infant and at eighteen, or marriage, for a female; the printed derivation reads “Md. Act 1798” ↩
59. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1140, headed “Husband as guardian” (a female minor who marries may select her husband as guardian of her estate, on which the previous guardian settles a final account), with § 1154 (no valid disposition by a married woman under twenty-one) and § 1157 (an infant wife under the ordinary disabilities of infancy). The Code nowhere ends the guardianship of a female’s estate at eighteen, and these three sections together assume it running past that age ↩
60. Clement Dorsey, The Statutory Testamentary Law of Maryland, with the Decisions of the Courts Thereof, Explanatory of the Same (Baltimore: Published by Fielding Lucas, Jr., 1838), ch. XXXV, § 1, printing the Maryland act of 1798, ch. 101: the orphans court appoints a guardian where land descends or is devised to a male under twenty-one or a female under sixteen, or where such a child is entitled to a distributive share of an intestate estate, a legacy, or a bequest, and the guardianship runs to twenty-one for a male and to sixteen, or marriage, for a female; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutorytestame00dorsiala : accessed 3 August 2026). Continued in the District by the Organic Act of 1801, 2 Stat. 103 ↩
61. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 387, on the distribution of personal estate to the illegitimate children of any female and their issue ↩
62. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 968, headed “Illegitimate children,” on taking real estate by inheritance ↩
63. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 967, headed “Antenuptial children”: a child of a woman whom the father afterwards marries, if acknowledged by the man, is legitimated by virtue of the marriage and acknowledgment and is capable in law of inheriting and transmitting heritable property as if born in wedlock; applied in Thomas v. Murphy, 107 F.2d 268 (D.C. Cir. 1939) ↩
64. An act directing the course of descents, October 1785, §§ XVI–XVII, in Hening, Statutes at Large, vol. 12, pp. 139–40: a child born outside marriage is capable of inheriting and of transmitting inheritance on the part of the mother as if lawfully begotten of her; and where a man who has children by a woman afterwards marries her, those children, if recognized by him, are thereby legitimated ↩
65. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1625, headed “Who capable of making will”: no will is good for any purpose unless the maker is, if a male, of the full age of twenty-one years, and if a female, of the full age of eighteen, and of sound and disposing mind and capable of executing a valid deed or contract ↩
66. Dorsey, Statutory Testamentary Law of Maryland, ch. VII, §§ 1–3, printing the Maryland act of 1798, ch. 101, sub-ch. 1: no will is good for any purpose unless the maker is of sound and disposing mind and capable of executing a valid deed or contract, and none is good to pass an interest or estate in land unless the maker is, if a male, of the full age of twenty-one years, and if a female, of the full age of eighteen. The age requirement attaches to the land clause alone, and the section sets no age for a will of personal property ↩
67. An act concerning wills, the distribution of intestates’ estates, and the duty of executors and administrators, October 1785, in Hening, Statutes at Large, vol. 12, pp. 140–41: § I, a will of land may be made by “every person aged twenty-one years or upwards, being of sound mind, and not a married woman,” and must be attested by two or more credible witnesses only if it is “not wholly written by himself”; § IV, “No person under the age of eighteen years shall be capable of disposing of his chattels by will” ↩
68. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1626, headed “Form of will and revocation” ↩
69. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 1634, headed “Nuncupative wills” ↩
70. The English statute of 25 George II, ch. 6, which voided a devise to a subscribing witness and thereby rendered the witness competent, and which did not extend to wills of personal property, so that an interested witness to such a will was “considered as no witness, being incompetent from interest”: Dorsey, Statutory Testamentary Law of Maryland. Virginia reached the same result by statute for Alexandria County: Act of October 1785, § IX, in Hening, Statutes at Large, vol. 12, pp. 141–42, voiding a bequest to a subscribing witness where the will cannot otherwise be proved and making the witness competent and compellable as to the rest of the will. The Code of 1901 carries no provision on a devise or bequest to an attesting witness; § 1626 requires two credible witnesses and no more ↩
71. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 261, headed “Competency of executors” ↩
72. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 294, headed “Persons over eighteen years of age”; the printed derivation reads “Md. act 1798, c. 101, § 7” ↩
73. Dorsey, Statutory Testamentary Law of Maryland, ch. XXV, §§ 1, 7: letters withheld from a person named as executor who is under eighteen at the time administration ought to be granted, and the bond of an executor above eighteen and under twenty-one binding as if he were of full age ↩
74. Act of 20 June 1874, § 4, 18 Stat. 116, taxing all real estate in the District except that of the United States, the District, and property used for education, charity, and religion ↩
75. Welch v. Cook, 97 U.S. 541 (1878) ↩
76. District of Columbia Revenue Act of 1939, Act of 26 July 1939, ch. 367, 53 Stat. 1085; replaced by the District of Columbia Income and Franchise Tax Act of 1947, 61 Stat. 328 ↩
77. An Act to continue, alter and amend the Charter of the City of Washington, Act of 17 May 1848, ch. 42, 9 Stat. 223. The power to lay the tax is at p. 224: the corporation may “lay and collect a school-tax upon every free white male citizen of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, of one dollar per annum.” Section 3 requires the elected board of assessors to “make return of all persons subject to a school-tax” and fines an assessor who neglects to do so; § 5 confines the vote to a free white male citizen of twenty-one, resident a year, who has been returned as subject to the school tax for the preceding year and has paid it, excepting paupers, vagrants, persons non compos mentis, and those convicted of an infamous crime; § 9 dedicates the proceeds to common schools; § 1 continues the city charter for twenty years. Digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/us_stat_9 : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩
78. Loughborough v. Blake, 18 U.S. (5 Wheat.) 317 (1820) ↩
79. The Maryland poll-tax acts, settled in 1676 at sixteen to sixty for all white males and all enslaved people and reenacted in 1692; printed in Archives of Maryland, vol. I, p. 449 (1662), vol. II, pp. 135–36 (1666), p. 399 (1674), pp. 538–39 (1676), and vol. XIII, p. 538 (1692); digital images, Archives of Maryland Online, Maryland State Archives (https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000002/html/am2--538.html : accessed 3 August 2026). The sequence is traced in Maryland State Archives, “Blacks before the Law in Colonial Maryland” (https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/speccol/sc5300/sc5348/html/footnotes2.html : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩
80. Maryland Declaration of Rights, 1776, art. XIII: “That the levying taxes by the poll is grievous and oppressive, and ought to be abolished,” and that every other person ought to contribute according to his actual worth in real or personal property. The first statewide property tax followed at the 1777 session, ch. 21; the sequence is set out in Maryland State Archives, “A Brief History of the Department of Assessments and Taxation” (https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/educ/speeches/html/dathistory051402.html : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩
81. October 1705, ch. VII, “An act concerning Tithables,” § I, in Hening, Statutes at Large, vol. 3: all male persons of sixteen and upwards, and all women of color of sixteen and upwards “not being free,” declared tithable for the public, county, and parish charges, excepting those the county court exempted. The dating is confirmed against Library of Virginia, “Personal Property Tax Records: Timeline of Record Changes” (https://lva-virginia.libguides.com/personal-property-tax/tax-changes : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩
82. Act of 1723, amending the tithable provisions of the act of 1705 to reach free people of color and Indians above sixteen, except tributary Indians, and their wives; in Hening, Statutes at Large, vol. 4, pp. 132–33. The requirement that heads of households also list everyone between ten and sixteen, and the reckoning of ages as of 9 June, are described in the Library of Virginia guide cited above ↩
83. The move to personal property and land tax lists in 1782, and the contents of those lists, are described in the Library of Virginia guide cited above ↩
84. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 215, headed “Qualifications” ↩
85. Revised Statutes of the United States Relating to the District of Columbia (1875), § 872, headed “Qualifications of jurors”: a juror must be a citizen of the United States, a resident of the District, over twenty-one and under sixty-five years of age, and a good and lawful man never convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor involving moral turpitude. The printed derivation reads the act of 16 June 1862, ch. 102, 12 Stat. 429, and the act of 18 March 1869, ch. 3, 16 Stat. 3. The section carries no literacy requirement and no racial requirement; the literacy test first appears in the Code, Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 215. The jury lists were then made by officers the supreme court of the District designated in general term, from citizens of the wards and districts in proportion to the inhabitants, §§ 851–852; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/us_stat_18 : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩ ↩
86. Every jury provision in the congressional compilation of District law traces to 1862 or later: Revised Statutes of the United States Relating to the District of Columbia (1875), §§ 851–875, whose printed derivations read the act of 16 June 1862, ch. 102, 12 Stat. 428–30, the act of 18 March 1869, ch. 3, 16 Stat. 3, and the act of 20 April 1871, ch. 26, 17 Stat. 16. No earlier congressional statute set the qualifications, so for the years before 1862 the qualifications and the manner of summoning have to be read from the venire and jury records of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, described in National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the District Courts of the United States (Record Group 21) (https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/021.html : accessed 3 August 2026) ↩
87. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), §§ 198–199, constituting the clerk of the court, the United States marshal, and the collector of taxes a commission to make the jury list and fix its size, and directing that jurors be selected as nearly as may be from citizens in the different parts of the District; the jury box and the drawing are at §§ 200–201, the term of service at § 202, and replacement of those drawn at §§ 205–206 ↩
88. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), § 209, allowing the court, where the regular panel is exhausted, to draw further names or order the marshal to summon talesmen; and § 208, on replacing jurors found incompetent or excused ↩
89. Act of 19 March 1906, ch. 960, 34 Stat. 73, creating a juvenile court for the District with jurisdiction over children under seventeen ↩
90. Code of Law for the District of Columbia (1911), §§ 1063–1067, on the competency of witnesses generally and the testimony of a surviving party to a transaction with a person since dead or incapable. Neither these sections nor the corresponding provisions of the earlier compilation — Revised Statutes of the United States Relating to the District of Columbia (1875), §§ 876–878 — set any minimum age for a witness ↩ ↩
91. Laws of Maryland, 1717, ch. 13, §§ 2–3; printed in Snethen, Black Code of the District of Columbia, ch. XII ↩
92. Laws of Maryland, 1796, ch. 67, § 5; printed in Snethen, Black Code of the District of Columbia, ch. XII ↩
93. Revised Statutes of the United States Relating to the District of Columbia (1875), § 879, headed “No exclusion on account of color”: “In all judicial proceedings in the District there shall be no exclusion of any witness on account of color.” The printed derivation reads the Act of 12 July 1862, ch. 154, § 5, 12 Stat. 539; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/us_stat_18 : accessed 3 August 2026). The emancipation act of 16 April 1862, 12 Stat. 376, had already directed that no witness be excluded on account of color before the commissioners hearing compensation claims ↩

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.