Wyoming Historical Law Guide

Contents

Legal Ages at a Glance

General Principles

An English legal system

Wyoming’s law came from England. Congress created Wyoming Territory by the Organic Act of 25 July 1868, and the first territorial legislature met at Cheyenne in 1869. It adopted the common law of England — judge-made law, handed down through court decisions rather than written by a legislature — together with the English statutes passed in aid of it before 1607¹. The courts have held that whatever of the common law is in force in Wyoming is there by the terms of that adopting statute².

Every rule below therefore rests either on that received common law or on a Wyoming statute. Organized government reached the ground only in 1868, and from the first territorial legislature onward Wyoming owned, sold, and inherited property on common-law principles, changed as the legislature saw fit.

From January 1891 the district courts held exclusive original jurisdiction over probate³, and the Constitution transferred the papers of the territorial probate courts to them⁴. Wills, estates, and guardianships are therefore filed with the clerk of the district court for the county, and territorial-era files were carried into those same records rather than left behind.

A common law rewritten by statute

The legislature replaced common-law rules with statutes over time, and those dates make useful anchors — each marks a change visible in the records:

• 1869 — in a single fortnight in December: the common law adopted, married women given a separate estate, marriage regulated and marriage across racial lines made a crime, dower and curtesy abolished and a fixed share of the estate given in their place, and women given the vote.
• 1876 — the Compiled Laws, the first territorial codification, gathering those acts into one volume.
• 1882 — a divorce and annulment code, the first wills act, a new conveyancing chapter, and wider contract powers for married women.
• 1887 — the Revised Statutes, the last full territorial compilation, printing each section with the act it came from.
• 1890 — statehood on 10 July, under the Constitution framed in 1889.
• 1890–91 — the Probate Code, taken from California: probate and guardianship placed in the district courts.
• 1949 — women admitted to jury service, effective 1 January 1950.

For any given year, the rule in force is the statute where one had been passed by then, and the common law otherwise.

Legal Age of Adulthood

Majority at twenty-one

Full legal age in Wyoming was 21, the common-law age received by the adopting statute of 1869⁵. Anyone under 21 was an “infant” in legal language, even a 20-year-old. The age was 21 for women as well as men, without variation, through 1950⁶. It dropped to 18 in 1973.

What a minor could not do alone

A minor could own property. What the law limited was the minor’s power to dispose of it:

• A deed passed the estate where the person making it was of lawful age⁷. A minor’s contract or deed was voidable — valid until the minor chose to undo it — and the minor could undo it within a reasonable time after coming of age. The Supreme Court applied the rule to a note and mortgage a wife set aside on the ground that she had been under 21 when she signed⁸.
• Marriage left a minor a minor for contracting. From 1891 it did end the guardianship of a girl who had one.

A minor came of age by reaching 21. Wyoming had no court procedure for granting adult powers early, and marriage did not confer majority for general purposes; a federal survey of the states as they stood in 1938 names those that allowed either, and Wyoming is in neither list⁹. So a young person acting independently in the records did so as a matter of fact, not by any court order, and there is no decree to look for.

Marriage

Who was old enough to marry

At the time of marriage the male had to be of the age of eighteen years or upwards, and the female of the age of sixteen or upwards. Those are the words of the very first marriage act, approved 10 December 1869, and they are still the words of the Revised Statutes of 1899¹⁰. The two figures held through 1950.

Below the marrying age the marriage was voidable rather than void: it stood unless someone went to court to undo it, and it could not be undone at all once the parties had reached the age of consent and freely lived together as husband and wife¹¹. In practice an ancestor’s underage Wyoming marriage was almost certainly valid.

Parental consent

The consent rule ran unchanged from the act of 1869 through 1950. Where either party was a minor — that is, under 21 — the clerk could grant no license without consent, spoken if the consenting person was present, written if absent, proved by the testimony of at least one competent witness. The statute set an order: the father if living, and if not, then the mother, or the guardian or person under whose care the minor was¹².

The consent, or the witness statement proving it, stays in the clerk’s marriage license file. It names the parent or guardian who gave it, which makes it one of the few county records that identifies a parent directly, and it establishes that the party was under 21 on that date. Because the father came first in the statutory order, a consent given by the mother is good evidence that the father was already dead.

Void marriages and annulment

A marriage was void from the start, without any decree, in three situations: where either party already had a husband or wife living; where either party was mentally incompetent at the time; and where the parties stood to each other as parent and child, grandparent and grandchild, brother and sister of the half or the whole blood, uncle and niece, aunt and nephew, or first cousins¹¹. A marriage was voidable, and could be annulled by the district court, where a party was under the age of consent, or where consent had been obtained by force or fraud and the parties had not voluntarily lived together afterward.

Children conceived or born during a marriage were presumed legitimate¹³, and that presumption survived an annulment.

A valid marriage required a license and a ceremony

Marriage in Wyoming was a civil contract, and the consent of parties capable of contracting was essential to it¹⁴. Three things made it: a license obtained from the county clerk before the ceremony¹⁵; a ceremony performed by an authorized person; and the parties declaring, in the presence of that person and at least two attending witnesses, that they took each other as husband and wife¹⁶.

A couple who simply lived together as husband and wife acquired the status only by going through that ceremony. The Supreme Court held so squarely in 1943, in two companion cases decided the same day¹⁷, and later called the license requirement a declaration of public policy that the courts would enforce¹⁸. Before 1943 the question was open: a federal survey of the states as they stood in 1938 could not say what Wyoming’s position was¹⁹. So for the later years there is a marriage record for every valid Wyoming marriage, while for the earlier years a couple living as husband and wife without a license may have been taken as married at the time.

Two accommodations sit alongside the rule. A religious society could marry its members by its own rites, the keeper of its minutes sending a certificate to the county clerk²⁰; and a marriage stood even where the person performing it turned out to have no authority, if the couple believed in good faith that he was authorized²¹.

The officiant gave the couple a certificate naming the parties, their ages and residences, the names and residences of at least two witnesses present, and the time and place; the county clerk recorded every return in a book kept for the purpose²². A Wyoming marriage return therefore gives ages for both parties and names two witnesses, who are often kin. Failure to record did not undo a marriage that was otherwise regular²³, so an absent entry is not proof that no marriage happened.

Marriages made outside Wyoming

All marriage contracts valid where they were contracted were valid in Wyoming²⁴, even where the couple went out of state deliberately to escape a Wyoming rule: a woman who remarried within a year of her Wyoming divorce was validly married, because the statute she avoided punished the parties without voiding the marriage²⁵. A couple missing from Wyoming’s marriage returns may well have married in Colorado, Nebraska, or Utah, and the marriage was good.

Race restrictions on marriage

The years from 1868 to 1950 fall into three parts. The first territorial legislature acted twice in December 1869. It made a marriage between a white person and a person of one-eighth or more African or Asian ancestry void without any decree, in a clause printed in the Compiled Laws of 1876 not in the marriage chapter but in the divorce chapter, among the marriages void without any decree²⁶. It also made that marriage a crime, by a separate act punishing the white party with three to seven years in the penitentiary and the other party with one to five, and any minister or officer who knowingly performed the ceremony with a fine or a jail term²⁷.

Both were gone by the mid-1880s. The divorce act of 1882 re-enacted the list of marriages void without any decree and reduced it to three: where a party had a husband or wife living, where a party was insane or an idiot, and where the parties stood within the forbidden degrees of kinship. The racial clause is not among them²⁸, and the criminal act had dropped out of the law by the Revised Statutes of 1887, which carries no racial bar on marriage at all²⁷. So from 1882 to 1913 a mixed-race couple could take out a license and appear in the ordinary returns like anyone else.

From 1913 a marriage in Wyoming between a white person and a person the statute described as Black, of mixed race, Asian, or Malay was illegal and void, and knowingly contracting one was a criminal offense²⁹. The prohibition stood until it was repealed in 1965. Where the bar applied — before 1882 and again after 1913 — expect no Wyoming license or return, and look to a neighboring state.

Marriages on the Wind River Reservation

Marriages made among the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho according to tribal law and custom rested on that custom and on federal law rather than on Wyoming’s license statute. The Supreme Court of the United States put the principle plainly: the relations of tribal members among themselves were governed by the customs and laws of the tribe unless Congress directed otherwise³⁰. Such marriages produced no county license and no county return, and their absence from Wyoming’s marriage books says nothing about whether a couple was married.

Property Ownership

Who could own land

Any person of full age could acquire, hold, and convey land in Wyoming, of either sex and of any race. A child could own land at any age but could not convey it freely until 21. A married woman held and dealt with her own land from the territory’s first year. A resident alien stood on the same footing as a citizen. What follows is therefore mostly about who had to join in a deed, and about land that never reached the county books at all.

Married women held their own property from the beginning

At common law a married woman was a feme covert, “covered woman,” and her legal identity merged into her husband’s under the rule called coverture: he took the rents and profits of her land, owned her wages, and her contracts had no force on their own. Wyoming’s first territorial legislature set that rule aside in 1869, and the Compiled Laws of 1876 carried the new rule forward. All property a married person owned at marriage, or acquired afterward by descent or otherwise, together with its rents, issues, increase, and profits, was during the marriage that person’s sole and separate property under his or her sole control, to be held, owned, possessed, and enjoyed the same as though single; it was not subject to the other spouse’s disposal, control, or interference, and was not liable for the other spouse’s debts³¹. The necessary expenses of the family and the education of the children were chargeable on the property of either or both.

The powers came with the ownership. A married person could transfer separate property in the same manner and to the same extent as if unmarried, could make contracts and incur obligations enforceable in the same way, and could sue and be sued alone in all matters touching property, person, or reputation³². A married woman conveyed her own real estate by her own deed or mortgage in like manner as if she were an unmarried woman³³. She could also make a will as though she were single, and the 1869 act closed the question from the other side as well: the separate deed of the husband conveyed no interest in the wife’s lands³¹.

So a woman buying, selling, mortgaging, or suing in her own name in Wyoming records may perfectly well be married, and her independent appearance in a deed book carries no evidence either way about her marital status.

What the surviving spouse took instead of dower

Dower was a widow’s right to the use of a share of her late husband’s land for the rest of her life; curtesy was the husband’s counterpart in his late wife’s land. Each was a life estate — the use of land for one’s lifetime, with the ownership passing to someone else. Wyoming’s first legislature set both aside. The act regulating descent and distribution, approved 10 December 1869, abolished dower and the tenancy by the curtesy and provided that neither husband nor wife should have any share in the estate of the other except as that act itself allowed³⁴. The rule was in force from the territory’s first year, so it governs every year through 1950.

What stood in their place was the fixed share on intestacy, the widow’s allowance and the family homestead, and the joinder rule described next.

When a wife had to sign her husband’s deed

A husband conveyed his own separate land by his own deed, alone. Because Wyoming gave a widow no dower, she had no dower right to release, so a Wyoming deed of ordinary land regularly carries the husband’s signature and no other, and that is a complete deed.

The homestead is the exception, and it is the one to watch. The homestead is the family dwelling and the land around it, set aside by law beyond the reach of creditors. A conveyance or mortgage of the homestead is void unless it is freely and voluntarily signed and acknowledged by both the owner and the owner’s spouse, and unless the instrument itself carries words releasing and waiving all rights under the homestead exemption laws of the state³⁵. The courts enforced this strictly across four decades of decisions³⁶, and the Supreme Court summarized the position by saying that a woman’s right to control and dispose of her own estate during her life was absolute except in the case of a homestead³⁷. A married woman was entitled to the homestead exemption in her own separate property even though she was not the head of the family.

So the signature to look for is on homestead land, and the tell is the release-and-waiver clause printed in the deed. A recorded deed carrying that clause and two spousal signatures proves the seller was married on the date of the deed and that the land was the family home. Both are filed with the county clerk.

Witnessing and acknowledging a deed

The rule changed once, and the change is easy to see on the page. Under the territorial conveyancing chapter carried into the Compiled Laws of 1876, a deed or mortgage of Wyoming land had to be signed in the presence of two witnesses, who signed their names as such, and the seller had to acknowledge the deed — appear before an authorized officer and confirm that the signature was his — before a judge or commissioner of a court of record, a notary public, or a justice of the peace³⁸. The conveyancing act of 1882 cut the number to one witness and changed the list of officers to a judge or clerk of a court of record, a county clerk, a notary public, or a commissioner appointed by the governor³⁹. Recording with the county clerk then gave notice of the conveyance to everyone.

Neither chapter set an age for the witness. What the job required was a person who could say afterward what he had seen, and in practice deed witnesses were adults. So a Wyoming deed of the 1870s carries two witness signatures alongside the seller’s, one from 1882 onward carries a single witness, and both carry an acknowledgment certificate. Wyoming completed a deed with those signatures and that certificate alone. It took no privy examination — the private interview with an official, apart from her husband, by which states that kept coverture certified that a wife had signed freely — so there is no separate examination certificate on a Wyoming deed, in any decade.

Land held by husband and wife together

Where land was conveyed to a husband and wife together they took it by the entirety: the survivor took the whole, and neither could divide or convey it alone, nor could one of them alone dispose of its rents, income, and profits⁴⁰. Land held this way passed to the survivor outside probate, so expect no estate file to record the transfer — the deed into both names and the death of one spouse are the whole of the paper trail.

Land owned by children

A child could own land at any age, taking it by inheritance, gift, or purchase just as an adult did. Conveying it was the constraint: a deed passed the estate where the person making it was of lawful age, and a minor’s deed could be undone within a reasonable time after the minor turned 21. In practice a minor’s land was managed by a guardian of the property and any sale went through a court proceeding. Own at any age; convey freely at 21.

That court proceeding leaves a useful pair of records. The petition and order for the sale of a minor’s land sit in the guardianship file, and under the territorial statute the petition had to be served personally on the minor at least ten days before the hearing⁴¹, so the child’s own name appears in the papers. A certified copy of any decree setting apart a homestead, confirming a sale, or otherwise affecting the title to real property was recorded with the county clerk of the county where the land lay⁴². A minor’s land therefore appears in the deed records by way of a court decree rather than an ordinary deed.

Reservation land and foreign-born owners

Allotted and trust land on the Wind River Reservation — land assigned to individual Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho people, or held for them by the United States — was governed by federal law. Under the General Allotment Act of 1887 the United States held each allotment in trust for twenty-five years, and any sale or contract touching the land during that time was void⁴³. Dealings in such land were federal transactions and do not appear in county deed books at all. For reservation families the land records are federal allotment records, and their absence from the county indexes is expected rather than significant.

A foreign-born resident owned land on the same terms as a citizen, whether naturalized or not. The Constitution provided that no distinction should ever be made by law between resident aliens and citizens as to the possession, taxation, enjoyment, and descent of property, and the descent statute added that the alienage of a person’s descendants would not invalidate any title to land descending from them⁴⁴. There is no alien land law to explain a gap in a family’s title.

Inheritance

One system for land and goods

Wyoming divided all property, real and personal, under a single rule of descent. Land and personal property followed the same course and reached the same people, so an intestate estate leaves one file and one division to trace.

What the survivors took

Where a person died intestate — without a will — the shares were these, and they had been these since the act of 10 December 1869⁴⁵:

The surviving spouse’s half did not change with the size of the family. A widow with one child took a half, and a widow with eight children took a half, the eight sharing the other half between them. Read the fractions in a Wyoming estate division on those terms.

Where a spouse survived and there were no children or their descendants, the estate split three ways to one: three-fourths to the survivor, and one-fourth to the dead spouse’s father and mother, or to whichever of them was living. Only where the whole estate, real and personal, came to $10,000 or less did the survivor take all of it. That one-fourth is often the reason a set of otherwise unexplained in-laws appears in a distribution.

One wrinkle affects the earliest years. As the act of 1869 was printed, the ten-thousand-dollar proviso stood without the words confining it to a couple who had no children; those words were inserted by an amendment approved 15 December 1877⁴⁶. For a death before that date, read the proviso in the 1869 text.

The descendants of a child who died before the parent took by representation — that is, they divided between them the single share their own parent would have taken had he or she lived. Grandchildren named in a Wyoming distribution are therefore standing in for a dead child of the deceased, and their presence dates that child’s death before the ancestor’s.

When a will left out a husband or wife

A will could not defeat the surviving spouse’s half. The wills statute let a testator dispose of everything except what was needed to pay debts and what the law allowed to husband and family or wife and family, and what the law allowed was the half the descent statute gave. The Supreme Court described the result in 1940 as the husband’s option to take one-half of his wife’s estate in spite of her will⁴⁷. It runs both ways, and a widow claiming against a will is the more commonly seen.

For research the point is that a Wyoming will leaving the whole estate away from a spouse did not do what it said. Look at the decree of distribution — the court order that finally divides the estate — rather than the will: the survivor may take half regardless, and the difference between the two documents is often the only sign that the marriage was unhappy.

The widow’s allowance and the homestead

Beyond her share, the widow was provided for from the territory’s first year. Under the act of 1869 she kept, as her sole and separate property, one bed and bedding, the wearing apparel of herself and her family, two cows, her saddle and bridle, one horse, the household furniture, and everything else exempt from execution, free of her husband’s debts. The executor or administrator set that property apart to her, and where the estate did not contain the listed articles she could take other property or its value in money instead⁴⁸.

The Probate Code of 1890–91 restated and widened the provision: the surviving spouse and the minor children were entitled to remain in the homestead, to have the wearing apparel and household furniture set aside to them, and to a reasonable allowance out of the estate for their support while the estate was being settled⁴⁸. A claim to have property set aside was substantial enough that a jury could be demanded on it⁴⁹.

The order setting apart the homestead and fixing the allowance is a separate document in the estate file with the clerk of the district court, and it usually names the widow and each minor child. Where it touches the homestead, a certified copy was also recorded with the county clerk, so the same fact appears in the land records.

Minors and their guardians

A minor inherited immediately, and managing that inheritance fell to a guardian. Wyoming separated the two offices: a guardian of the person had custody of the child and the power over him a parent would have, while a guardian of the property — later called a conservator — had the custody and care of the child’s estate. They could be different people, so look for two records rather than one. The guardian of the property gave bond, filed an inventory within twenty days, accounted every year, and made a final settlement when the guardianship ended⁴¹.

A guardian was appointed chiefly because a minor owned property, and the territorial statute said so directly: though both parents were living and of sound mind, a guardian had to be appointed to manage any property the minor had not received from either of them⁴¹. Where a child inherited nothing there is often no guardianship record at all.

Where a minor with a living parent had property whose income would keep and educate him more expensively than the parent could reasonably afford, the court could direct that his maintenance and education be paid out of the income of his own estate⁵⁰. Such an order says the parent was of modest means and the child’s money came from somewhere else, usually a dead relative’s estate.

At fourteen a minor could name his or her own guardian, subject to the court’s approval; below fourteen the court chose. The age was fixed in the first territorial codification of 1876 and carried forward unchanged through the Probate Code of 1890–91⁵¹. A minor of fourteen could also petition for the appointment himself, and a child who had been under fourteen when a guardian was appointed could name his own on reaching that age⁵². A guardianship record in which the child does the choosing is therefore evidence the child had reached 14, which brackets a birth year.

How long the guardianship ran depended on the period. Under the territorial statute it ran until the minor came of age, with no other cut-off⁴¹. From 1891 the guardian held the custody, care and education of the minor and the management of the estate until the minor reached majority — and, in the case of a girl, until she married or reached majority, whichever came first⁵³. A girl’s guardianship closing early is therefore evidence of a marriage, and the final settlement dates it; the same document approximates a birth year and frequently reveals her married surname. For a boy, look to his twenty-first birthday.

Who got the office followed the family. Under the territorial statute the father was the natural guardian of the persons of his minor children, and on his death or incapacity the mother became guardian; a parent could also name a guardian by will⁴¹. From 1891 the father was entitled to the guardianship if living, and after his death the mother was — but only while she remained unmarried, and only while each was competent to transact their own business and not otherwise unsuitable⁵⁴. A guardian appointed over a widow’s children shortly after she remarried is following the statute, not a family quarrel.

The guardianship papers are held by the clerk of the district court, who was required by statute to keep the record of the proceedings of the guardianship of infants alongside the letters, inventories, and sale records of decedents’ estates⁵⁵.

Children born outside marriage

A child born outside marriage inherited from the mother, and the mother from the child, throughout the period. Inheritance from the father turned on one route: if the parents afterward married each other and the father then recognized the child as his, the child inherited exactly as though born in wedlock⁵⁶. Both halves of that test matter — the marriage alone was not enough without the father’s recognition after it.

Wyoming also set a separate rule of descent for the estate of such a person when he or she died: the property passed to that person’s own widow or surviving husband and children as in any other case, and where there were no children or their descendants, the whole went to the surviving spouse⁵⁷.

Where no marriage followed, the mother’s remedy was a bastardy proceeding, and it leaves an unusually rich record: a sworn complaint by the mother before a justice of the peace naming the man she charged, a bond naming the men who stood surety for him, and a trial and an order in the district court against the man found to be the father⁵⁶. The sureties are commonly his kin. The county commissioners could prosecute the suit and sue on the bond, which is why these files often sit among county business papers.

Making a will and naming an executor

Wyoming’s first wills statute is the act of 1882, and its title says as much: an act to provide the manner in which wills shall be executed in the Territory of Wyoming. Neither the session laws of the first legislature nor the Compiled Laws of 1876 carry a wills chapter, so through the territory’s first decade the making of a will rested on the English law received under the adopting statute rather than on any Wyoming act⁵⁸. From 1882 the rule is on the page: any person of full age and sound mind could make a will disposing of all of his property, except so much as was needed to pay his debts, and subject to what the law allowed the surviving spouse and family. Full age meant the age of majority, so 21.

The territory’s first decade had ages of its own, and they were not 21 across the board. Under the English rules Wyoming had received, a will of land could be made only at 21, but a will of personal property — money, livestock, furniture — could be made by a boy of 14 and a girl of 12⁵⁹. For a death between 1869 and 1882, then, a strikingly young testator disposing of goods is not a mistake in the record.

A will had to be in writing, signed by the testator — the person making the will — and witnessed by two competent witnesses⁶⁰. No minimum age was set for a witness; competency was the test. A witness who was left something under the will did not spoil the will: the witness simply forfeited whatever the gift exceeded the share he would have taken had there been no will, unless two other disinterested witnesses had also signed. So a Wyoming will witnessed by a beneficiary is still a good will, and the beneficiary’s loss shows in the distribution rather than in the probate.

The two-witness rule was stated without exception, and it covered a will written out by the testator in his own hand as much as any other⁶¹. So every Wyoming will of this period should carry two witness signatures, and an unwitnessed one is not a valid will. A nuncupative will, spoken rather than written, was recognized in a narrow form with its own requirements of proof, and the proceeding to prove one is a distinct file⁶².

Three kinds of person could not hold the office of executor or administrator, and the rule is older than the wills act: from the first territorial code, a person under twenty-one years of age was incompetent to serve; a married woman could not be appointed at all, whether as executrix or administratrix — the words used for a woman in either office; and an executor had to be a resident and a citizen of the United States⁶³. Where a will named an executor who was under age, the court granted letters of administration with the will annexed instead — the same authority to settle the estate, given to someone other than the person the will named — and could revoke them when he came of age. So the name in the will and the name on the court’s letters may not match, and the mismatch is itself evidence: that the named executor, often a son, was still a minor at the testator’s death, or that a named executrix was a married woman, or that the person named had moved out of the country.

Taxation

What was taxed

The general property tax, assessed and collected at the county level on land and personal property, was the mainstay of Wyoming taxation through 1950⁶⁴. For genealogy the assessment rolls are the useful product: they name the taxpayer, place him in a precinct in a given year, and list his livestock and improvements, which makes them a serviceable census substitute for the years between the federal censuses and a way of dating an arrival and a departure.

Wyoming also levied a poll tax — a flat tax on a person rather than on property, sometimes called a capitation tax. Under an act approved 13 December 1873 the county commissioners levied it every year, at two dollars a head, on each person over the age of twenty-one, collected as other taxes were; an amendment of 14 December 1875 added that no poll tax was to be levied or collected from anyone over fifty⁶⁵. The statute says each person over twenty-one, not each man, so read a surviving list on its own terms rather than assuming it names only men. The same two figures were still in the revenue chapter of the Revised Statutes of 1899⁶⁵. No poll tax survives in Wyoming law today.

The tax came in two further forms that leave their own paper. The road poll tax could be discharged by labor instead of cash, at two dollars for each day’s work of eight hours, so a road-work list is a poll list under another name: it records people of working age, in a named road district, in a given year. And poll taxes levied for school purposes went to the treasurer of the school district where the payer lived rather than being shared across the county, so a school district’s poll receipts place a payer in that district and not merely in the county⁶⁵.

A name dropping off a poll list while the person is still alive elsewhere in the record has usually just reached fifty, and a name appearing for the first time has usually just reached twenty-one — which brackets a birth year within a year or so.

Wyoming enacted a general sales tax in 1935, and never levied a state tax on individual income⁶⁶. Neither leaves a record naming individuals in the way a poll list does.

Courts

Jury service

The territorial legislature gave women the vote and the right to hold office on 10 December 1869⁶⁷. The chief justice read that as reaching jury service, and on 7 March 1870 women were sworn to the grand jury of Albany County at Laramie — the panel that decides whether charges should be brought, and the first anywhere to include women. Women were sworn to a petit jury, the kind that hears a trial, at Laramie the following month⁶⁸.

His successors on the bench declined to seat women, and the practice stopped. The jury statute spoke of male persons, and in 1892 the Supreme Court settled the question, holding that the right to vote granted to women did not carry with it the right to serve as a juror⁶⁹. From 1871 until the end of the 1940s, Wyoming jurors were men.

The other qualifications changed twice, so the test depends on the decade. Under the territorial statute a juror had to be a male citizen living in the county who had the qualifications of an elector — which put the minimum age at twenty-one — of sound mind and discretion, not a judge, clerk, sheriff, coroner, or jailer, and not convicted of a penitentiary offense. There was no upper age: men over fifty, along with ministers, county officers, lawyers, doctors, postmasters, and railroad men, could simply decline⁷⁰. An act of 1886 added the ability to read and write English, moved the age that excused a man to sixty-five, and set the county assessor to asking each taxpayer his jury qualifications and entering them on the assessment roll⁷¹. From 1899 the statute fixed the figures in the table above: a male citizen of the United States aged twenty-one to sixty, resident in the state a year and in the county ninety days; in possession of his natural faculties, of ordinary intelligence and not decrepit; able to read and speak English; and assessed on the last assessment roll of the county⁷².

Land ownership was never required, but from 1886 being on the tax roll was. The jury list was therefore drawn from the tax list, so a man on a Wyoming jury was a man the assessor had found, and the two records can be read against each other.

The legislature reopened jury service to women in 1949, replacing the word “male” in the qualification statute so that it read that a person is competent to act as juror if he or she be qualified, effective 1 January 1950⁷³. The change was challenged at once and upheld by the Supreme Court, which observed that the equality provisions of the Wyoming Constitution make women the equals of men before the law⁷⁴. Women sat on Wyoming juries again from May 1950⁶⁸.

The dating use follows directly. A woman’s name on a Wyoming jury list belongs either to 1870–71 or to 1950 and after. There is no middle ground, and the document dates itself.

Criminal responsibility

The line sat at fourteen throughout, but what lay below it changed once. From the crimes act of December 1869, printed in the first codification of 1876, to the revision of 1899 the ages were statutory:

• Under 10 — no child could be found guilty of any crime or misdemeanor⁷⁵.
• 10 to 14 — a child answered for a crime only on proof that he knew the distinction between good and evil. The statute counted a person of sound mind as one who had reached fourteen, or who knew that distinction before reaching it⁷⁶.
• 14 and over — full criminal responsibility, tried and punished as an adult.

Where a child under ten did the act, the adult who counseled or encouraged him was prosecuted for the offense as principal and suffered the punishment the child would have borne⁷⁷. So for these years look for the adult’s name on the charge, not the child’s.

From 1899 the received common law supplied the ages instead, the revision of that year having left the statutory sections out⁷⁸. A child under 7 was then incapable of crime; from 7 to 14 he was presumed incapable, and the State could rebut the presumption by proving he knew right from wrong; at 14 he answered as an adult. The practical line is the same one either way — a defendant of 14 or over is an ordinary criminal defendant, and below 14 the file should show the State proving the child knew what he was doing.

A second route ran alongside the criminal courts. An act of 1884, replaced by one of 1888, let a child under sixteen convicted of any offense except homicide be committed to a reform or industrial school in any state that had one, and reached a child between ten and sixteen found on complaint and proof to be a vagrant or incorrigible⁷⁹. Wyoming had no such institution of its own, so the child was sent out of state and the county paid for his keep: a boy who leaves the Wyoming record in his teens may be found in an institution in a neighboring state.

The file changes character in 1945. Until then the proceeding produced an ordinary district court criminal file. From 1945 it was entitled “In the Interest of ______, a Minor Child” and could be docketed with the probate records rather than the criminal ones⁸⁰, so for 1945 to 1950 look in both places. Wyoming had no juvenile court until 1951⁸¹, so for these years there is no confidential juvenile file to look for.

Witnesses

All persons were competent witnesses, with two exceptions: those of unsound mind, and children under ten years of age who appeared incapable of receiving just impressions of the facts they were examined about, or of relating them truly⁸². The age of ten is not a bar in itself. A child under ten was heard if the judge, examining the child first, found the capacity there; a child of ten or over was competent without that inquiry. So a young child does appear as a witness in Wyoming records, and the judge’s preliminary examination is the thing to look for in the file.

Two rules limited adults rather than children, and both shape estate litigation. Communications between husband and wife were privileged, and separate statutes governed when a husband and wife could testify against each other in civil and in criminal cases. Wyoming also had a dead man’s statute, which restrained a party from testifying about a transaction with someone who had since died⁸³. That is why a contested Wyoming estate is so often proved by the testimony of neighbors and hired hands rather than by the people who stood to gain.

Wyoming admitted any competent person as a witness whatever their race. The competency statutes of this period turn on soundness of mind, on the age of a very young child, and on a party’s interest in a transaction with someone since dead, and they classify no one by race; neither do the jury qualification statutes⁸⁴. A Black, Chinese, or Native witness appears in a Wyoming courtroom on the same terms as any other.

Sources and Where to Verify

Constitutions

• Wyoming Constitution of 1889, in force 1890. Art. 1, § 9 (trial by jury); art. 1, § 29 (rights of aliens); art. 5, § 10 (district court jurisdiction of all matters of probate); art. 5, § 29 (juvenile delinquency and domestic relations courts, added by an amendment proposed in 1947, ratified 2 November 1948, and proclaimed in effect 1 December 1948); art. 21, § 17 (transfer of probate court causes and records to the district courts). Wyoming Secretary of State. https://sos.wyo.gov/Forms/Publications/WYConstitution.pdf (accessed 12 August 2026).

Codes and Compilations

• Bosley, Winthrop, comp. 1940 Supplement to the 1931 Wyoming Revised Statutes Annotated. Denver, Colorado: Courtright Publishing Company, 1940. Limited to 500 numbered copies, and superseding the same publisher’s supplement of 1934. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112104865136 (accessed 12 August 2026).
• The Code of Civil Procedure of the State of California. San Francisco: Bancroft-Whitney Co., 1897. Not Wyoming law, but the parent of Wyoming’s probate and guardianship code of 1890–91; §§ 1747–1753 carry the guardianship provisions, and the Wyoming sections print marginal derivations to them. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/codecivilprocedu00cali (accessed 12 August 2026).
• The Compiled Laws of Wyoming. J. R. Whitehead, Superintendent of Compilation. Cheyenne, Wyoming: H. Glafcke, Leader Steam Book and Job Print, 1876. The first territorial codification, published by authority of the Fourth Legislative Assembly and carrying the acts of December 1869 and the sessions that followed: ch. 3 (alienation by deed, including the two-witness rule, pp. 5–7), ch. 26 (adoption of the common law, p. 193), ch. 35 (crimes, general provisions, including the ages of criminal responsibility, pp. 248–249), ch. 42 (descent and distribution — the spousal shares, the abolition of dower and curtesy, inheritance by children born outside marriage, and the widow’s allowance, pp. 286–289), ch. 44 (divorces, and the marriages void without decree, pp. 290–292), ch. 47 (executors and administrators, including who was incompetent to serve, p. 312 and following), ch. 60 (guardians, pp. 364–367), ch. 64 (the criminal bar on marriage across racial lines, pp. 376–377), ch. 69 (juries, p. 388), ch. 81 (marriages, p. 478 and following), ch. 82 (protection to married women, p. 481 and following), ch. 92 (poll tax, pp. 500–501). Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/compiledlawswyo00whitgoog (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Revised Statutes of Wyoming, in Force January 1, 1887. Prepared and edited by John W. Blake, Willis Van Devanter, and Isaac P. Caldwell, Commissioners. Cheyenne, Wyoming: The Daily Sun Steam Printing House, 1887. The last full territorial compilation before statehood, reprinting the earlier chapters with their derivations beside each section, which is what settles the dates of the territorial rules: § 498 (common law), §§ 854–861 (crimes), Alienation ch. 1 (conveyances, from the act of 1882), §§ 2221–2233 (descent; dower and curtesy abolished; children born outside marriage; the widow’s allowance), §§ 2234–2249 (wills, from the act of 1882), §§ 2250–2273 (guardians), §§ 2332–2336 (juvenile delinquents, from the act of 1884), §§ 2588–2590 (witnesses), §§ 3376–3378 (jurors, from the act of 1886), § 3769 (poll tax). The volume carries no racial restriction on marriage. Digital images. Internet Archive (Library of Congress Early State Records Project). https://archive.org/details/esrp681517281 (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Revised Statutes of Wyoming, in Force December 1, 1899. Revised, compiled, edited, and published by J. A. Van Orsdel, Attorney General, and Fenimore Chatterton, Secretary of State, by authority of the Fifth State Legislature. Laramie, Wyoming: Chaplin, Spafford & Mathison, Printers, 1899. The single most useful volume for this guide: it carries the descent, guardianship, wills, jury, and revenue provisions cited above, and prints each section with its marginal derivation to the territorial statutes and, for the probate sections, to the California code they came from. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112105420865&seq=11 (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Wyoming Compiled Statutes, Annotated, 1910. Revised, compiled, and annotated by William E. Mullen, Attorney General, as commissioner under ch. 119, Session Laws of 1909. Laramie, Wyoming: The Laramie Republican Company, Printers and Binders, 1910. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112105420972 (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Wyoming Compiled Statutes, Annotated, 1920. Compiled by William E. Mullen and Clarence A. Swainson. Sheridan, Wyoming: The Mills Company, 1920. 1,444 pages. The compilers and imprint follow the Harvard Law School Library catalog record and the Wyoming Legislative Service Office’s compilation guide, which agree independently of one another.
• Wyoming Revised Statutes, 1931, Annotated. Cheyenne: The State of Wyoming, Office of the Secretary of State, 1931; printed by S. E. Boyer and Company. Contains the general laws in force through the 1931 session. The publisher follows the HathiTrust catalog record and the printer the Wyoming Legislative Service Office’s compilation guide.
• Wyoming Compiled Statutes, 1945, Containing the General Laws of Wyoming Annotated. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1945. 5 vols. The compilation in force at the close of the period covered here. The publisher follows the Wyoming Legislative Service Office’s compilation guide and the Copyright Office’s Catalog of Copyright Entries; the Legislative Service Office attributes the supplements of 1946–57 to The Mills Company.
• Wyoming Statutes (current), annotated. Each section is printed with its full derivation back to the territorial codes, which is the fastest route to the chapter and section numbers used above. Wyoming Legislature. https://www.wyoleg.gov/StateStatutes/StatutesConstitution (accessed 12 August 2026).

Session Laws

The territorial volumes below were microfilmed together by the Library of Congress Early State Records Project and are digitized in one Internet Archive item, one text file per session. Session laws are cited here by year, chapter, and section, which is how they are indexed in every compilation; the state volumes from 1890–91 onward are searchable in the Wyoming State Library’s Wyoming Legislation database, listed under Secondary and Reference Works below, which links each chapter to its enrolled act and originating bill. Every act named here can also be read where it was carried forward in the compilations listed above.

• General Laws, Memorials and Resolutions of the Territory of Wyoming, Passed at the First Session of the Legislative Assembly. Cheyenne, W.T.: S. Allan Bristol, Public Printer, Tribune Office, 1870. The acts of December 1869, including woman suffrage, the married women’s property act, the marriage act, the act preventing marriage across racial lines, the descent and distribution act, and the crimes act. The volume carries no wills act. Digital images. Internet Archive (Library of Congress Early State Records Project). https://archive.org/details/esrp434459495 (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Laws of Wyoming, Passed by the Fifth Legislative Assembly. Cheyenne, Wyoming: H. Glafcke, Public Printer, Daily Leader Office, 1878. Page 35, the act approved 15 December 1877 amending the descent and distribution act of 1869. Digital images. Internet Archive (Library of Congress Early State Records Project). https://archive.org/details/esrp434459495 (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Session Laws of Wyoming Territory, Passed by the Seventh Legislative Assembly. Cheyenne, Wyoming: Sun Steam Book and Job Print, 1882. Ch. 1 (alienation by deed, reducing the witnesses to one), ch. 40 (divorce and alimony, re-enacting the list of void marriages without the racial clause), ch. 68 (rights of married women), ch. 107 (the first Wyoming wills act). Digital images. Internet Archive (Library of Congress Early State Records Project). https://archive.org/details/esrp434459495 (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Session Laws of Wyoming Territory, Passed by the Eighth Legislative Assembly. Cheyenne, Wyoming: Democratic Leader Book and Job Print, 1884. Ch. 53, commitment of juvenile offenders. Digital images. Internet Archive (Library of Congress Early State Records Project). https://archive.org/details/esrp434459495 (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Session Laws of Wyoming Territory, Passed by the Ninth Legislative Assembly. 1886. Ch. 114, jurors: the qualification, the reading and writing requirement, and the assessor’s duty to record each taxpayer’s jury qualification. Printed in full as Revised Statutes of Wyoming, in Force January 1, 1887, §§ 3376–3378. Digital images. Internet Archive (Library of Congress Early State Records Project). https://archive.org/details/esrp434459495 (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Session Laws of Wyoming Territory, Passed by the Tenth Legislative Assembly. Cheyenne, Wyoming: E. A. Slack, Printer and Binder, Daily Sun Office, 1888. Ch. 57, amending §§ 2332–2333 of the Revised Statutes and replacing the act of 1884. Digital images. Internet Archive (Library of Congress Early State Records Project). https://archive.org/details/esrp434459495 (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Session Laws of the State of Wyoming, 1890–91. Ch. 70, the Probate Code, effective 10 January 1891 and taken from the laws of California; the source of the guardianship, family allowance, executor, and nuncupative will provisions cited above. The act was subdivided into twenty-eight parts which it called chapters and which the annotated statutes have redesignated as articles; the disposition table printed with title 2 of the current statutes maps every one, and article 21 covers guardians.
• Session Laws of the State of Wyoming, 1895. Ch. 20 (validating type-written wills), ch. 69, § 39 (road poll tax worked off in labor), ch. 93, § 5 (homestead conveyance).
• Session Laws of the State of Wyoming, 1899. Ch. 23, § 1 (juror qualifications, fixing the ages of twenty-one and sixty); ch. 81 (husband and wife as witnesses).
• Session Laws of the State of Wyoming, 1913. Ch. 57 (House Bill 153), marriage across racial lines, passed 22 February 1913.
• Session Laws of the State of Wyoming, 1935. Ch. 74, the Sales Tax Act (House Bill 124; House Enrolled Act 78).
• Session Laws of the State of Wyoming, 1945. Ch. 90 (county detention homes) and ch. 121, § 3 (juvenile proceedings not criminal proceedings).
• Session Laws of the State of Wyoming, 1949. Ch. 61 (House Bill 40; House Enrolled Act 58), admitting women to jury service from 1 January 1950.
• Session Laws of the State of Wyoming, 1965. Casper, Wyoming: Prairie Publishing Company; compiled and published under statutory authority by Thyra Thomson, Secretary of State. Ch. 4, “Miscegenation Law Repealed,” approved 27 January 1965. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/sessionlaws02wyomgoog (accessed 12 August 2026).

Federal Laws

• General Allotment Act (the Dawes Act). An act to provide for the allotment of lands in severalty to Indians on the various reservations, 8 February 1887, ch. 119, 24 Statutes at Large 388. Section 5, at page 389, holds each allotment in trust for twenty-five years and voids any conveyance or contract touching the land made within that time. Digital images. GovInfo, United States Government Publishing Office. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-24/pdf/STATUTE-24-Pg388.pdf (accessed 12 August 2026).

Court Cases

• Altman v. Schuneman. 39 Wyo. 414, 273 P. 173 (1929).
• Bachmann v. Hurtt. 26 Wyo. 332, 184 P. 709 (1919).
• Connors v. Connors. 5 Wyo. 433, 40 P. 966 (1895).
• Harney v. Montgomery. 29 Wyo. 362, 213 P. 378 (1923).
• Hoagland v. Hoagland. 27 Wyo. 178, 193 P. 843 (1920).
• In re Kiesel’s Estate. 35 Wyo. 300, 249 P. 81 (1926).
• In re Reeves’ Estate. 58 Wyo. 432, 133 P.2d 503 (1943).
• In re Roberts’ Estate. 58 Wyo. 438, 133 P.2d 492 (1943).
• In re Smith’s Estate. 55 Wyo. 181, 97 P.2d 677 (1940).
• In re Trent’s Claim. 68 Wyo. 146, 231 P.2d 180 (1951).
• Jones v. Kepford. 17 Wyo. 468, 100 P. 923 (1909).
• Kelsey v. Carroll. 22 Wyo. 85, 138 P. 867 (1913).
• McKinney v. State. 3 Wyo. 719, 30 P. 293 (1892).
• State Bank of Wheatland v. Bagley Bros. 44 Wyo. 244, 11 P.2d 572 (1932).
• State v. Foster. 5 Wyo. 199, 38 P. 926 (1895).
• State v. Yazzie. 67 Wyo. 256, 218 P.2d 482 (1950).
• Towne v. Rumsey. 5 Wyo. 11, 35 P. 1025 (1893).
• United States v. Quiver. 241 U.S. 602, 36 S. Ct. 699 (1916).
• Ward Terry & Co. v. Hensen. 75 Wyo. 444, 297 P.2d 213 (1956).

Secondary and Reference Works

• Foster, William E. “A Study of the Wyoming Miscegenation Statutes.” Wyoming Law Journal 10, no. 2 (1956): 131–140. The act of 1869, its repeal in 1882, and the act of 1913. Law Archive of Wyoming Scholarship. https://scholarship.law.uwyo.edu/wlj/vol10/iss2/5 (accessed 12 August 2026).
• “History of the Wyoming Sales Tax.” Wyoming Almanac. The 1935 sales tax as a temporary emergency measure, and the income tax that never gained voter or legislative approval. https://wyomingalmanac.com/?p=2199 (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Legislative Service Office. Legislative History of Wyoming Laws. Cheyenne: Wyoming Legislature, May 2024. Lists each historical compilation with its publisher. https://www.wyoleg.gov/leginfo/policies/HistoryWyomingLawCombined.pdf (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Schouler, James. A Treatise on the Law of Wills. 3rd ed. Boston: Boston Book Company, 1900. Sections 40–41, pages 39–41, state the English rules on the age at which a will could be made, which are the rules Wyoming received for the years before its own wills act of 1882. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/onlawofwills00scho (accessed 12 August 2026).
• United States Women’s Bureau. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1938, Final Report, Giving Summary for All States Combined. Bulletin 157. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1941. And United States Summary as of January 1, 1953. Bulletin 157 (Revised 1956). Washington: Government Printing Office, 1956. Topic-by-topic tables naming the states that followed each rule, which is what settles the age of majority for women, the emancipation of minors, and the standing of the common-law marriage in Wyoming. Digital images. FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/5430 (accessed 12 August 2026).
• United States Women’s Bureau. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for Wyoming. Bulletin 157-49 (revised). By Sara Louise Buchanan. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1949. vi + 13 pages. States the Wyoming rules on majority, marriage, property, and inheritance as they stood in 1948, with citations to the then-current code. Brought forward by Addendum to Bulletin 157-49 — The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America, January 1, 1948, Report for Wyoming as of January 1, 1953. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1953. Page images. HathiTrust; both are listed at The Online Books Page, https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=United+States.+Women's+Bureau (accessed 12 August 2026).
• University of Wyoming College of Law Library. “Compiling Wyoming Legislative Histories.” The route from a modern section back through the territorial compilations. https://www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/researchguides/wyohistory.html (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Viner, Kim. “Women on the Jury: Wyoming Makes History Again.” Wyoming Lawyer (June 2024). The 1870 Laramie jurors, the long exclusion, and the restoration of 1949–50.
• Wunnicke, Brooke. “The 1951 Juvenile Court Law of Wyoming.” Wyoming Law Journal 8, no. 3 (1954): 173–182. Traces every Wyoming statute on juvenile offenders and dependent children from 1869 to 1951, and establishes that Wyoming was the last state in the Union to create a juvenile court. Law Archive of Wyoming Scholarship. https://scholarship.law.uwyo.edu/wlj/vol8/iss3/3 (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Wyoming State Archives. County records inventories and research guides, for the custodian and contents of marriage, probate, guardianship, and land records. https://wyoarchives.wyo.gov (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Wyoming State Library. Wyoming Legislation. A searchable database of Wyoming session laws, enrolled acts, bills, and journals from the first territorial session of 1869 forward, linking each session-law chapter to its enrolled act and originating bill. The source of the chapter numbers for the acts of 1882, 1888, 1935, 1949, and 1965 cited above. https://wyominglegislation.wyo.gov (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Wyoming State Library. “Women’s Suffrage in Wyoming: Women in Law.” Dates the 1870 grand and petit juries and the first mixed jury of 8 May 1950. https://gowyld.libguides.com/wyomingwomenssuffrage/womeninlaw (accessed 12 August 2026).
• Unicourt / Public.Resource.Org. Wyoming Statutes Annotated, open HTML edition. Each section is printed with its full history line, and the note headed “History and disposition of original Probate Code” at the front of title 2 maps every article of ch. 70, Laws 1890–91, to its present sections. https://unicourt.github.io/cic-code-wy/ (accessed 12 August 2026).

Citations

1. The Compiled Laws of Wyoming (Cheyenne, Wyoming: H. Glafcke, Leader Steam Book and Job Print, 1876), ch. 26, § 1, p. 193, “An Act Adopting the Common Law of England and Certain Declaratory and Remedial Statutes of said Kingdom,” approved 2 December 1869, the received law to be of full force until repealed by legislative authority; imprint and text read from the volume, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/compiledlawswyo00whitgoog : accessed 6 August 2026). Carried through the Revised Statutes of Wyoming, in Force January 1, 1887 (Cheyenne, Wyoming: The Daily Sun Steam Printing House, 1887), § 498, imprint and text read from the volume, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/esrp681517281 : accessed 6 August 2026), and the Revised Statutes of Wyoming, in Force December 1, 1899 (Laramie, Wyoming: Chaplin, Spafford & Mathison, Printers, 1899), § 2695, imprint read from the title page, digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112105420865&seq=11 : accessed 6 August 2026), to Compiled Statutes (1945), § 16-301, now W.S. 8-1-101 ↩
2. State v. Foster, 5 Wyo. 199, 38 P. 926 (1895); In re Smith’s Estate, 55 Wyo. 181, 97 P.2d 677 (1940) ↩
3. Wyo. Sess. Laws 1890–91, ch. 70, the Probate Code, effective 10 January 1891 and taken from the laws of California, art. 1, § 1 (exclusive jurisdiction in the district courts) and art. 28, § 4 (references to the probate judge or court to mean the district court or judge); carried through the Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4531, to Compiled Statutes (1945), § 6-101, now W.S. 2-2-101. The act was subdivided into twenty-eight parts, which it called chapters and which the annotated statutes have since redesignated as articles; both forms therefore describe the same subdivision, and it is cited here as an article. The disposition table printed with the current title 2 sets out each one, and is the authority for the article numbers used below — among them art. 4 (proof of lost and nuncupative wills), art. 7 (letters of administration), art. 13 (support of the family and care of the homestead), art. 20 (orders, decrees and records), art. 21 (guardian and ward) and art. 28 (miscellaneous). Section 6 of art. 28 repealed Revised Statutes of 1887, §§ 2240–2273, which is why the territorial guardian-and-ward chapter ends here ↩
4. Wyo. Const. art. 5, § 10; art. 21, § 17; Wyoming Secretary of State (https://sos.wyo.gov/Forms/Publications/WYConstitution.pdf : accessed 6 August 2026) ↩
5. The common-law age, received by the Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 26, § 1. The figure is confirmed on the face of the same volume at ch. 47, § 4, which bars any person “under twenty-one years of age” from serving as executor or administrator. No statute of this period displaced it: the derivation of the modern majority section, W.S. 14-1-101, begins at Laws 1973, ch. 213, § 1 ↩
6. United States Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1938, Final Report (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1941), topic 1, “Age of Majority,” naming the nine States that fixed majority at 21 for men and 18 for women — Arkansas, Idaho, Illinois, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Utah. Wyoming is absent from that list, and absent again from the same list in the United States Summary as of January 1, 1953 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1956), p. 9. Digital images, FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/5430 : accessed 6 August 2026) ↩
7. Revised Statutes of 1887, Alienation, ch. 1, § 1: conveyances of land or of any estate or interest therein may be made by deed, signed and sealed by the person from whom the estate or interest is intended to pass, being of lawful age, or by his lawful agent or attorney, and acknowledged or proved and recorded as directed in that chapter; from Session Laws of Wyoming Territory, 1882, ch. 1, “Alienation — An Act Concerning Alienation by Deed, of the Proof and Recording of Conveyances, the Cancelling of Mortgages, and for Other Purposes,” § 1, text read from the volume. The same words are older than that act: The Compiled Laws of Wyoming (1876), ch. 3, “Alienation,” § 1, p. 5, in the same terms, so the rule ran unbroken from the territorial period ↩
8. Ward Terry & Co. v. Hensen, 75 Wyo. 444, 297 P.2d 213 (1956) ↩
9. United States Women’s Bureau, Final Report (1941), topic 1, which names the six states allowing adult powers to be granted by court decree on a minimum age and the three allowing it with none; Wyoming appears in neither group, nor among the states where marriage conferred majority for general purposes. The modern emancipation article, W.S. 14-1-201 through 14-1-206, dates from Laws 1989, ch. 207 ↩
10. The Compiled Laws of Wyoming (Cheyenne, Wyoming: H. Glafcke, Leader Steam Book and Job Print, 1876), ch. 81, § 2, p. 478, from the act to regulate marriages approved 10 December 1869: at the time of marriage the male must be of the age of eighteen years or upwards, and the female of the age of sixteen or upwards; text read from the volume. The same words, headed “Marriageable age defined,” appear at Revised Statutes of 1899, § 2956, p. 790, carrying the marginal derivation Revised Statutes of 1887, § 1542, and run on to Compiled Statutes (1945), § 50-102; the present figures descend from Laws 1975, chs. 4 and 61 ↩
11. Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 44, §§ 1–2, pp. 290–291, the fourth subdivision reaching illegitimate as well as legitimate relations, and § 2 providing that a marriage contracted under the age of legal consent stands where the parties, after reaching that age, freely live together as husband and wife; text read from the volume. Carried through Wyo. Sess. Laws 1882, ch. 40, §§ 1–3, 26, and the Revised Statutes of 1899, §§ 2981–2984, to Compiled Statutes (1945), §§ 3-5901 to 3-5903, 3-5927, now W.S. 20-2-101 ↩ ↩
12. Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 81, § 5, p. 479, approved 10 December 1869, and Revised Statutes of 1899, § 2959, in the same words: when either party is a minor no license shall be granted without the verbal consent, if present, and written consent, if absent, of the father, if living, if not, then of the mother of such minor, or of the guardian or person under whose care and government such minor may be, the written consent to be proved by the testimony of at least one competent witness. Text read from the 1876 volume; carried through the Revised Statutes of 1887, § 1545, to Compiled Statutes (1945), § 50-105 ↩
13. Wyo. Sess. Laws 1882, ch. 40, § 22; Revised Statutes of 1899, § 3005; Compiled Statutes (1945), § 3-5923 ↩
14. Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 81, § 1; carried through the Revised Statutes of 1887, § 1541, and the Revised Statutes of 1899, § 2955, to Compiled Statutes (1945), § 50-101, now W.S. 20-1-101 ↩
15. Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 81, §§ 4, 6, 7; carried through the Revised Statutes of 1887, §§ 1544, 1546, 1547, and the Revised Statutes of 1899, §§ 2958, 2960, 2961, with amendments in 1907, 1931, 1935 and 1945, to Compiled Statutes (1945), §§ 50-104, 50-106, 50-107 ↩
16. Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 81, §§ 8, 9; carried through the Revised Statutes of 1887, §§ 1548, 1549, and the Revised Statutes of 1899, §§ 2962, 2963, to Compiled Statutes (1945), §§ 50-110, 50-111 ↩
17. In re Roberts’ Estate, 58 Wyo. 438, 133 P.2d 492 (1943), holding the two-witness requirement mandatory and a common-law marriage no marriage; In re Reeves’ Estate, 58 Wyo. 432, 133 P.2d 503 (1943) ↩
18. In re Trent’s Claim, 68 Wyo. 146, 231 P.2d 180 (1951), overruled on another point by Bowers v. Wyoming State Treasurer, 593 P.2d 182 (Wyo. 1979) ↩
19. United States Women’s Bureau, Final Report (1941), topic 19, “Validity of Common-Law Marriage,” which places Wyoming in neither the group of States denying the common-law marriage nor the group allowing it, and records that the policies of Maine and Wyoming on the question were not clear as of 1 January 1938 ↩
20. Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 81, § 15; Revised Statutes of 1899, § 2969; Compiled Statutes (1945), § 50-116 ↩
21. Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 81, § 14; Revised Statutes of 1899, § 2968; Compiled Statutes (1945), § 50-115 ↩
22. Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 81, §§ 10, 12, 16; carried through the Revised Statutes of 1887, §§ 1550, 1552, 1556, and the Revised Statutes of 1899, §§ 2964, 2966, 2970, to Compiled Statutes (1945), §§ 50-112, 50-113, 50-117. Section 11 of ch. 81, on the return of the ceremony, was repealed in 1945 as conflicting with the vital statistics act of 1941 ↩
23. Connors v. Connors, 5 Wyo. 433, 40 P. 966 (1895) ↩
24. Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 81, § 17; Revised Statutes of 1899, § 2971; Compiled Statutes (1945), § 50-118 ↩
25. Hoagland v. Hoagland, 27 Wyo. 178, 193 P. 843 (1920), construing the prohibition then at Compiled Statutes (1910), § 3951 ↩
26. Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 44, § 1, p. 290, in the act to regulate divorces and alimony, declaring a marriage void without any decree where “one party is a white person, and the other is possessed of one-eighth, or more, negro or Mongolian blood”; text read from the volume. The bar sat in the divorce chapter rather than the marriage chapter, which is why ch. 81, § 3 forbade the solemnizing of marriages “declared void by the divorce law of this Territory.” For the sequence see William E. Foster, “A Study of the Wyoming Miscegenation Statutes,” 10 Wyoming Law Journal 131 (1956), digital images, Law Archive of Wyoming Scholarship (https://scholarship.law.uwyo.edu/wlj/vol10/iss2/5 : accessed 12 August 2026) ↩
27. The Compiled Laws of Wyoming (Cheyenne, Wyoming: H. Glafcke, Leader Steam Book and Job Print, 1876), ch. 64, pp. 376–377, “An Act to Prevent Intermarriage between White Persons and those of Negro, or Mongolian Blood”: § 1 makes it a felony, punishable by three to seven years in the penitentiary, for a person of the white race knowingly to intermarry with a person of one-eighth or more negro, Asiatic, or Mongolian blood; § 2 sets one to five years for the other party; and § 3 makes it a misdemeanor, punishable by three months to a year or a fine of one hundred to five hundred dollars, for a minister, justice of the peace, or other person authorized to solemnize marriages knowingly to perform the ceremony. Text read from the volume, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/compiledlawswyo00whitgoog : accessed 12 August 2026). This chapter is separate from, and additional to, the clause in the divorce chapter cited above. It has no counterpart in the Revised Statutes of Wyoming, in Force January 1, 1887, which carries no racial restriction on marriage in any chapter; and see William E. Foster, “A Study of the Wyoming Miscegenation Statutes,” 10 Wyoming Law Journal 131 (1956), for the enactment of 1869, the repeal of 1882, and the re-enactment of 1913 ↩ ↩
28. Session Laws of Wyoming Territory, 1882 (Cheyenne, Wyoming: Sun Steam Book and Job Print, 1882), ch. 40, “An Act to Regulate Divorce and Alimony,” approved 8 March 1882, § 1; text and imprint read from the volume, digital images, Internet Archive (Library of Congress Early State Records Project) (https://archive.org/details/esrp434459495 : accessed 6 August 2026). The section lists three grounds only — a party with a husband or wife living, a party insane or an idiot at the time, and parties within the forbidden degrees — and carries no racial clause. Carried as Revised Statutes of 1899, §§ 2981–2984, which likewise contain none ↩
29. Wyo. Sess. Laws 1913, ch. 57, passed 22 February 1913 as House Bill 153, declaring such marriages illegal and void and making it an offense to contract one knowingly; appearing as Compiled Statutes (1920), § 4972. Repealed by Session Laws of the State of Wyoming, 1965 (Casper, Wyoming: Prairie Publishing Company; compiled and published under statutory authority by Thyra Thomson, Secretary of State), ch. 4, “Miscegenation Law Repealed” (Original House Bill No. 15), approved 27 January 1965, repealing §§ 20-18 and 20-19, Wyoming Statutes 1957; text and imprint read from the volume, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/sessionlaws02wyomgoog : accessed 6 August 2026) ↩
30. United States v. Quiver, 241 U.S. 602, 603–606 (1916): the policy of Congress and its administration for many years has been that the relations of the Indians among themselves are controlled by the customs and laws of the tribe, except where Congress has expressly or clearly directed otherwise. The rule is the one the Supreme Court has since cited for domestic relations generally ↩
31. The Compiled Laws of Wyoming (1876), ch. 82, “An Act to Protect Married Women in their Separate Property and the Enjoyment of the Fruits of their Labor,” approved 4 December 1869: § 1 gives the separate estate, § 2 lets her sell and contract about her personal property as if sole, § 3 lets her sue and be sued, § 4 lets her make a will as though sole, § 5 makes her trade, labor and earnings her own, and § 9 provides that the separate deed of the husband shall convey no interest in the wife’s lands. Carried through the Revised Statutes of 1887, § 1558, and the Revised Statutes of 1899, § 2972, with the acts of 1915 and 1917, to Compiled Statutes (1945), § 50-201, now W.S. 20-1-201 ↩ ↩
32. Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 82, §§ 3, 6, 7, with Session Laws of Wyoming Territory, 1882, ch. 68, “An Act in Relation to the Rights of Married Women,” approved 8 March 1882, § 3, text read from the volume; carried through the Revised Statutes of 1899, §§ 2973, 2974, 2977, 2978, 3760, to Compiled Statutes (1945), §§ 3-3510, 50-202, 50-203, 50-206, 50-207, now W.S. 20-1-202 ↩
33. Revised Statutes of 1887, Alienation, ch. 1, § 2, headed “Married women may convey”: a married woman may, by her deed or mortgage, convey her real estate in like manner as she might if she were an unmarried woman; from Wyo. Sess. Laws 1882, ch. 1, § 2, and carried as Revised Statutes of 1899, § 2732, now W.S. 34-1-108. The rule is older than the act of 1882: the same sentence stands at The Compiled Laws of Wyoming (1876), ch. 3, § 2, p. 5, so a married woman conveyed her own land by her own deed from the territorial period onward. Section 13 of the same chapter covers execution by a non-resident married woman ↩
34. The Compiled Laws of Wyoming (1876), ch. 42, § 1, p. 286, from “An Act Regulating Descent and Distribution of Property,” approved 10 December 1869: “Dower and the tenancy by the courtesy are abolished, and neither husband nor wife shall have any share in the estate of the other, save as herein provided.” Text read from the volume. Amended as to the ten-thousand-dollar proviso by Wyo. Sess. Laws 1877, p. 35, § 1, and carried, with that amendment shown in its marginal derivation, as Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2221, and Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4858, headed “Rule of descent — Dower and courtesy abolished”; now W.S. 2-4-101(b). The abolition is therefore an act of the first territorial legislature, not of the revision of 1887 ↩
35. Revised Statutes of 1899, § 2770: a deed of the homestead must carry a clause substantially “Including the release and waiver of the right of homestead,” or other words expressly showing that the parties intended to release the right, and no release or waiver of the right of homestead by the husband binds the wife unless she join in it; carried from the Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2748, and Wyo. Sess. Laws 1895, ch. 93, § 5, now W.S. 34-2-121. The volume prints Towne v. Rumsey, 5 Wyo. 11, as the annotation to this section ↩
36. Towne v. Rumsey, 5 Wyo. 11, 35 P. 1025 (1893); Jones v. Kepford, 17 Wyo. 468, 100 P. 923 (1909); Bachmann v. Hurtt, 26 Wyo. 332, 184 P. 709 (1919); Harney v. Montgomery, 29 Wyo. 362, 213 P. 378 (1923); Altman v. Schuneman, 39 Wyo. 414, 273 P. 173 (1929); State Bank of Wheatland v. Bagley Bros., 44 Wyo. 244, 11 P.2d 572 (1932) ↩
37. In re Smith’s Estate, 55 Wyo. at 181; and see Bachmann v. Hurtt, 26 Wyo. at 332, on a married woman’s homestead exemption in her own separate property ↩
38. The Compiled Laws of Wyoming (1876), ch. 3, “Alienation,” § 8, pp. 6–7, sidenoted “Two witnesses necessary”: deeds or mortgages of lands or any interest in lands executed within this Territory shall be executed in the presence of two witnesses, who shall subscribe their names to the same as such, and the person executing may acknowledge the execution before any judge or commissioner of a court of record, or before any notary public or justice of the peace within the Territory, the officer endorsing on the instrument a certificate of the acknowledgment and its true date under his hand and seal. Sections 9–11 govern instruments executed outside the Territory and by a married woman not residing in it. Text read from the volume, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/compiledlawswyo00whitgoog : accessed 12 August 2026). Neither this chapter nor the act of 1882 that replaced it sets any age for the witness ↩
39. Revised Statutes of 1887, Alienation, ch. 1, § 9, headed “Execution and acknowledgment within the territory”: deeds, mortgages or conveyances of lands, or any interest in lands, executed within this territory, shall be executed in the presence of one witness, who shall subscribe the same as such, and the person executing shall acknowledge the execution before a judge or clerk of a court of record, a county clerk, a notary public, or a commissioner appointed by the governor; from Wyo. Sess. Laws 1882, ch. 1, § 9, which reduced the number of witnesses from the two the territorial chapter had required and changed the list of officers; carried as Revised Statutes of 1899, § 2739, now W.S. 34-1-113 ↩
40. Ward Terry & Co. v. Hensen, 75 Wyo. at 444, holding also that the husband’s former exclusive right to the rents and profits of an estate by the entirety had been swept away by the married women’s statutes then at Compiled Statutes (1945), §§ 50-201 through 50-205 ↩
41. Revised Statutes of 1887, §§ 2250–2273, “Guardian and Ward,” carried from the Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 60; text read from the 1887 volume: § 2250 (the father natural guardian of the persons of his minor children, the mother on his death or incapacity, with no condition about her remarrying), § 2251 (the natural and actual guardian may appoint another by will), § 2252 (although the parents be living and of sound mind, a guardian must be appointed to manage property the minor did not derive from either of them), § 2254 (selection by a minor over fourteen and of sound intellect, subject to the court’s approval), § 2255 (bond and oath), § 2256 (inventory within twenty days, filed with the probate judge), § 2257 (the guardian of the person has the power a parent would have), § 2260 (petition to sell or mortgage the ward’s land served personally on the minor at least ten days before the hearing), § 2268 (annual accounting). The chapter runs from § 2250 to § 2273 and contains no provision ending a guardianship on the ward’s marriage ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
42. Wyo. Sess. Laws 1890–91, ch. 70, art. 20, § 1; Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4542; Compiled Statutes (1945), § 6-2701 ↩
43. General Allotment Act, 8 February 1887, ch. 119, § 5, 24 Statutes at Large 388, 389: the United States holds the land allotted in trust for the sole use and benefit of the allottee for twenty-five years, or such longer period as the President may direct, and any conveyance of the land or contract touching it made before the expiration of that time is null and void. Digital images, GovInfo, United States Government Publishing Office (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-24/pdf/STATUTE-24-Pg388.pdf : accessed 12 August 2026) ↩
44. Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 29, headed “Aliens’ rights”: no distinction shall ever be made by law between resident aliens and citizens as to the possession, taxation, enjoyment and descent of property. And see Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4861, that the alienage of the descendants shall not invalidate any title to real estate which shall descend from him or her, carried from the Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2226, and the Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 42, § 6 ↩
45. The Compiled Laws of Wyoming (1876), ch. 42, § 1, p. 286, approved 10 December 1869, text read from the volume: the estate descends “in parcenary to his kindred, male and female” — that is, to them together as co-heirs — subject to debts; one-half to a surviving husband or wife where children or the descendants of children survive; three-fourths to the survivor and one-fourth to the father and mother of the intestate, or the survivor of them, where no child or descendant of a child survives; and, by a proviso, the whole to the survivor where the estate, real and personal, does not exceed ten thousand dollars. Where no spouse survives, the order runs: to the children and the descendants of dead children, the descendants collectively taking their parent’s share; then to the father, mother, brothers and sisters and the descendants of dead brothers and sisters, in equal parts; then to grandparents, uncles, aunts and their descendants. Amended by Wyo. Sess. Laws 1877, p. 35, § 1, and carried as Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2221, and Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4858. The modern rule giving the whole estate to a spouse who survives without issue is later than this period ↩
46. Laws of Wyoming, Passed by the Fifth Legislative Assembly (Cheyenne, Wyoming: H. Glafcke, Public Printer, Daily Leader Office, 1878), p. 35, “An Act to Amend an Act entitled ‘An Act Regulating Descent and Distribution of Property,’” approved 15 December 1877; text and imprint read from the volume, digital images, Internet Archive (Library of Congress Early State Records Project) (https://archive.org/details/esrp434459495 : accessed 6 August 2026). Section 1 amends § 1 of the act of 10 December 1869 by inserting, after the words “Provided, That if the estate of such intestate, real and personal, does not exceed in value the sum of ten thousand dollars,” the words “and such intestate leave a husband or wife and no child nor descendant of any child.” The Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2221, prints the section with the inserted words and gives the derivation “C. L. 1876, ch. 42, § 1. S. L. 1877, p. 35, § 1” ↩
47. Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4565, letting a testator dispose of everything “except what is sufficient to pay his debts or what is allowed by law to husband and family or wife and family,” read with § 4858, allowing the survivor half the estate. The protection took no form of a separate election in this period; it was built into the two statutes together, and by 1940 the Supreme Court described the result as the husband’s option to take one-half of his wife’s estate in spite of her will — In re Smith’s Estate, 55 Wyo. at 181 ↩
48. For the territorial allowance, The Compiled Laws of Wyoming (1876), ch. 42, §§ 11–13, pp. 288–289, from the act approved 10 December 1869, text read from the volume: the widow is allowed to have and retain as her sole and separate property one bed and bedding, the wearing apparel of herself and family, two cows, her saddle and bridle, one horse, household furniture for herself and family, and the same amount and species of property, real and personal, as is exempt from execution, retained by her and set apart to her by the executor or administrator and in no case subject to the payment of the debts of the deceased (§ 11); she may relinquish any or all of the specified articles, or take their value in money or other personal property at her election, where the estate does not contain them (§ 12); and her right to her separate property is not affected by her renouncing or failing to renounce the provision made for her in her husband’s will (§ 13). Carried as Revised Statutes of 1887, §§ 2231–2233. For the later provision, Wyo. Sess. Laws 1890–91, ch. 70, art. 13, §§ 1–13, on the support of the family and the care of the homestead, now W.S. 2-7-501 and following ↩ ↩
49. In re Kiesel’s Estate, 35 Wyo. 300, 249 P. 81 (1926) ↩
50. Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4876, headed “Maintenance of minor,” from Wyo. Sess. Laws 1890–91, ch. 70, art. 21, § 11 (California Code of Civil Procedure, § 1757): where a minor having a parent living has property whose income is sufficient to maintain and educate him more expensively than the parent can reasonably afford, regard being had to the situation of the parent’s family, the expenses of his education and maintenance may be defrayed out of the income of his own property, in whole or in part, as the court or judge directs, and the charges allowed accordingly in the settlement of the guardian’s accounts ↩
51. Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 60, p. 365, carried as Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2254, headed “Selection by minor”: if the minor be over the age of fourteen years and of sound intellect, he may select his own guardian, subject to the approval of the court; text read from the 1887 volume. The Probate Code restated the age without changing it — Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4867, from Wyo. Sess. Laws 1890–91, ch. 70, art. 21, § 2 (California Code of Civil Procedure, § 1748): if the minor is under the age of fourteen the court or judge may nominate and appoint his guardian; if he is fourteen he may nominate his own guardian, who, if approved by the court or judge, must be appointed accordingly ↩
52. Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4866, from Wyo. Sess. Laws 1890–91, ch. 70, art. 21, § 1 (California Code of Civil Procedure, § 1747): the district court of each county, or the judge in vacation, may appoint guardians for the persons and estates of minors who have no guardian legally appointed by will or deed, on the petition of a relative or other person on behalf of the minor, or on the petition of the minor, if fourteen years of age. Section 4869, from art. 21, § 4 (California § 1750), lets a ward for whom a guardian was appointed under fourteen appoint his own on reaching that age, subject to the court’s approval; and § 4868 lets the court appoint where the minor’s nominee is not approved, the minor resides out of the state, or he neglects to nominate ↩
53. Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4872, headed “Powers and duties of guardian”: every guardian appointed shall have the custody and care of the education of the minor, and the care and management of his estate, until such minor arrives at the age of majority, and in case of a girl, until she marries or arrives at the age of majority, or until the guardian is legally discharged. From Wyo. Sess. Laws 1890–91, ch. 70, art. 21, § 7, whose parent is the California Code of Civil Procedure, § 1753; the Wyoming draftsman rewrote the California words “arrives at the age of majority or marries,” which reach a ward of either sex, so as to confine the marriage cut-off to a girl ↩
54. Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4870, headed “Father or mother entitled to guardianship”: the father of the minor, if living, and in case of his decease the mother, while she remains unmarried, being themselves respectively competent to transact their own business and not otherwise unsuitable, must be entitled to the guardianship of the minor. From Wyo. Sess. Laws 1890–91, ch. 70, art. 21, § 5; California Code of Civil Procedure, § 1751. Section 4871 gives the appointed guardian the custody and care of the education of a minor who has no father or mother living competent to have it ↩
55. Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4875, from Wyo. Sess. Laws 1890–91, ch. 70, art. 21, § 10: all letters of guardianship issued and all guardians’ bonds executed under the chapter, with the affidavits and certificates on them, must be recorded by the clerk of the court having jurisdiction of the persons and estates of the wards. And see Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4561; Compiled Statutes (1945), § 6-107 ↩
56. Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 42, § 7, carried as Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2227, headed “Illegitimate children, inheritance by,” and Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4862; text read from the 1887 volume: illegitimate children shall inherit the same as those born in wedlock if the parents subsequently intermarry and such children be recognized after such intermarriage by the father, and shall inherit from the mother and the mother from the children. For the proceeding by which paternity was fixed see the 1899 volume, Special Proceedings, ch. 7, “Bastardy,” §§ 5509–5532, covering the mother’s sworn complaint before a justice of the peace, the bond, the papers sent up to the clerk of the district court, the trial and the order against the man adjudged to be the father, and the county commissioners’ power to prosecute and to sue on the bond ↩ ↩
57. Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4864, headed “Rule of descent from illegitimate person,” carried from the Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2230, and the Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 42, § 10: the property descends to the widow or surviving husband and children as in other cases; where there are no children or descendants of a child, the whole descends to the widow or surviving husband ↩
58. Session Laws of Wyoming Territory, 1882 (Cheyenne, Wyoming: Sun Steam Book and Job Print, 1882), ch. 107, “An Act to Provide the manner in which Wills shall be Executed in the Territory of Wyoming and for other purposes,” § 1; text and imprint read from the volume, digital images, Internet Archive (Library of Congress Early State Records Project) (https://archive.org/details/esrp434459495 : accessed 6 August 2026): any person of full age and sound mind may dispose by will of all his property, except what is sufficient to pay his debts or what is allowed by law to husband and family or wife and family. Printed as Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2234, headed “Who may make wills,” and carried as Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4565, now W.S. 2-6-101. The statute fixes no figure of its own, so “full age” is the common-law majority. That this is the first Wyoming wills statute rests on three things read together: the act’s own title; the absence of any wills act in the General Laws of the first session, whose only use of the word is an exclusion in the conveyancing act; and the absence of a wills chapter in the Compiled Laws of 1876, where probate procedure sits alone in ch. 47, “Executors and Administrators” ↩
59. James Schouler, A Treatise on the Law of Wills, 3rd ed. (Boston: Boston Book Company, 1900), §§ 40–41, pp. 39–41: the rule the English ecclesiastical courts applied was that infants at the age of fourteen, if males, and twelve, if females, might make wills of their personal property, while infants under the age of twenty-one were expressly excepted from the Statutes of Wills of 32 and 34 Henry VIII, so that no one under twenty-one could devise land. Both rules are English law of a date before 1607, and so within the terms of Wyoming’s adopting statute of 1869. Digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/onlawofwills00scho : accessed 12 August 2026). Wyoming’s own wills act of 1882 replaced them with a single figure, full age ↩
60. Session Laws of Wyoming Territory, 1882, ch. 107, § 4, sidenoted “Two witnesses necessary”; text read from the volume. Printed as Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2237, headed “Will to be in writing — Subscribing witnesses,” text and derivation read from the volume: all wills to be valid must be in writing, witnessed by two competent witnesses, and signed by the testator or by some person in his presence and by his express direction; a witness competent at the time of attesting does not defeat probate by later incompetency; and no subscribing witness can derive any benefit under the will unless there be two other disinterested and competent witnesses, though a witness who would have taken on intestacy may still take to the extent and value of that share. Carried as Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4568, which adds type-written wills; those executed before 6 February 1895 were validated by Wyo. Sess. Laws 1895, ch. 20. Now W.S. 2-6-112 ↩
61. The requirement of two competent witnesses in Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2237, and Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4568, is stated without exception, and neither volume provides an alternative form for a will written in the testator’s own hand. The holographic will now allowed by W.S. 2-6-113 entered Wyoming law after the period covered here ↩
62. Wyo. Sess. Laws 1890–91, ch. 70, art. 4, §§ 1–7, on the proof of lost and nuncupative wills, now W.S. 2-6-207 ↩
63. The bar is older than the wills act. The Compiled Laws of Wyoming (1876), ch. 47, § 4, text read from the volume: no judge of any probate court in his own county, and no person under twenty-one years of age, or of unsound mind, shall be executor or administrator; and no married woman shall be executrix or administratrix. Restated in the Probate Code and printed as Revised Statutes of 1899, § 4628, “Who incompetent” (executors), and § 4637, “Persons incompetent” (administrators), each beginning with a person “under the age of majority,” from Wyo. Sess. Laws 1890–91, ch. 70, arts. 5 and 7 (California Code of Civil Procedure, §§ 1349 and 1369); § 4637 carries the derivation art. 7, § 3. Where the named executor was a minor, § 4632 granted letters of administration with the will annexed, revocable on his reaching majority. By § 4638, from art. 7, § 4, a married woman could not be appointed. The residence and citizenship requirement is older than the Probate Code: § 4570 descends from Wyo. Sess. Laws 1882, ch. 107, § 6, as amended by Laws 1886, ch. 4, §§ 1–2, printed as Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2239 ↩
64. Revised Statutes of 1899, Title XII, “Taxation and Revenue,” ch. 1: § 1761 (purposes and limits), § 1762 (property exempt), § 1763 (property subject to taxation), § 1773 (property to be listed yearly), and § 1779 (what the assessment roll must contain) ↩
65. The Compiled Laws of Wyoming (1876), ch. 92, § 1, p. 500, “An Act Fixing the Amount of Poll Tax, and Providing for the Better Collection of the Same,” approved 13 December 1873, with the compilers’ note that § 1 was amended by adding the second proviso by act of 14 December 1875; text and note read from the volume. Carried as Revised Statutes of 1887, § 3769, headed “Poll tax for county purposes and collection thereof”: the board of county commissioners of each county shall each year levy a poll tax of two dollars against each person over the age of twenty-one years, levied and collected as are other taxes, with the proviso that no poll tax shall be levied or collected from any person over fifty years of age; the proviso survives at Revised Statutes of 1899, § 1877. A separate school poll tax of two dollars on each person over twenty-one and under fifty appears at Revised Statutes of 1887, § 3768. For the road form see Revised Statutes of 1899, § 1943, allowing it to be worked off at two dollars for each day’s work of eight hours and excusing members of an organized fire company, from Wyo. Sess. Laws 1895, ch. 69, § 39; and for the school form, § 1193, directing that poll taxes levied for school purposes be paid to the treasurer of the school district in which the payer resides ↩ ↩ ↩
66. Wyo. Sess. Laws 1935, ch. 74, the Sales Tax Act, from House Bill 124, reported by the Revenue Committee and enrolled as House Enrolled Act 78. A second Sales Tax Act followed at Wyo. Sess. Laws 1937, ch. 102 (House Bill 118, House Enrolled Act 107), with a Use Tax at ch. 118 the same year. Now W.S. title 39, ch. 15. No individual income tax was ever enacted: see “History of the Wyoming Sales Tax,” Wyoming Almanac (https://wyomingalmanac.com/?p=2199 : accessed 6 August 2026), recording that the income tax never gained voter or legislative approval and that the sales tax passed in 1935 as a temporary emergency measure ↩
67. “An Act to Grant to the Women of Wyoming Territory the Right of Suffrage and to Hold Office,” approved 10 December 1869, in General Laws, Memorials and Resolutions of the Territory of Wyoming, Passed at the First Session of the Legislative Assembly (Cheyenne, W.T.: S. Allan Bristol, Public Printer, Tribune Office, 1870); imprint read from the title page, digital images, Internet Archive (Library of Congress Early State Records Project) (https://archive.org/details/esrp434459495 : accessed 6 August 2026) ↩
68. Wyoming State Library, “Women’s Suffrage in Wyoming: Women in Law,” recording the grand jury sworn at Laramie on 7 March 1870, the petit jury of April 1870, and the first mixed jury of 8 May 1950 (https://gowyld.libguides.com/wyomingwomenssuffrage/womeninlaw : accessed 6 August 2026); and Kim Viner, “Women on the Jury: Wyoming Makes History Again,” Wyoming Lawyer (June 2024) ↩ ↩
69. McKinney v. State, 3 Wyo. 719, 724, 30 P. 293, 295 (1892), decided 20 June 1892; Justia (https://law.justia.com/cases/wyoming/supreme-court/1892/116707.html : accessed 6 August 2026). Not to be confused with McKinney v. McKinney, 59 Wyo. 204, 135 P.2d 940 (1943), an unrelated decision ↩
70. The Compiled Laws of Wyoming (1876), ch. 69, “Juries,” § 1, p. 388: all male citizens residing in any of the counties of this Territory, having the qualifications of electors, and of sound mind and discretion, and not being judges of the supreme or district court, clerks of those courts, sheriffs, coroners, or jailors, or subject to any bodily infirmity amounting to a disability, and who have not been convicted of a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary, are competent to serve on all grand and petit juries within their counties; with a proviso that persons over fifty years of age, ministers of the gospel, probate judges, county commissioners, licensed attorneys, practicing physicians, postmasters and mail carriers, and railroad employees whose services may be required during the term of court shall not be compelled to serve. Section 2 exempts the first sixty names on the roll of an organized fire or hook and ladder company, and § 4 lets the court excuse any person for hardship. Text read from the volume, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/compiledlawswyo00whitgoog : accessed 12 August 2026). The qualifications of an elector fixed the minimum age at twenty-one; the chapter sets no maximum ↩
71. Revised Statutes of Wyoming, in Force January 1, 1887, § 3376, headed “Who are competent jurors,” from Wyo. Sess. Laws 1886, ch. 114, § 1: the same qualifications as the territorial chapter, with the addition that the juror be able to read and write the English language, and with the proviso now excusing persons over sixty-five instead of over fifty. Section 3377 covers excuses for hardship, and the following section, headed “Assessor to ascertain jury qualifications of tax-payers” and drawn from § 6 of the same act, required the county assessor and his deputies, at each annual assessment, to ask every person assessed for a property or poll tax his age, precinct, and length of residence in the territory, county, and precinct, and to determine from the answers whether he was qualified to serve. Text read from the volume, digital images, Internet Archive (Library of Congress Early State Records Project) (https://archive.org/details/esrp681517281 : accessed 12 August 2026) ↩
72. Revised Statutes of 1899, § 3340, headed “Qualifications of jurors,” from Wyo. Sess. Laws 1899, ch. 23, § 1: a person is competent to act as a juror if he be a male citizen of the United States, of the age of twenty-one and not more than sixty years, resident of the state one year and of the county ninety days before being selected and returned; in possession of his natural faculties, of ordinary intelligence and not decrepit; possessed of sufficient knowledge of the English language; and assessed on the last assessment roll of the county. Section 3341 disqualifies anyone lacking those qualifications or convicted of malfeasance in office, a felony or other high crime; § 3342 exempts a long list of officers and professions; and § 3387 required the assessors to ascertain each taxpayer’s jury qualification and enter it on the assessment roll ↩
73. Wyo. Sess. Laws 1949, ch. 61, headed “Jurors,” from House Bill 40, whose prime sponsor was F. C. Mockler, enrolled as House Enrolled Act 58. It substituted “he or she” for “male” in the juror qualification statute and took effect 1 January 1950 ↩
74. State v. Yazzie, 67 Wyo. 256, 218 P.2d 482 (1950) ↩
75. The Compiled Laws of Wyoming (1876), ch. 35, § 4, p. 249, from “An Act Defining Crime and Providing for the Punishment Thereof”: an infant under the age of ten years shall not be found guilty of any crime or misdemeanor; text read from the volume. Carried as Revised Statutes of Wyoming, in Force January 1, 1887, § 857, headed “Infant under ten years cannot commit crime” ↩
76. Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 35, § 3, p. 249, carried as Revised Statutes of 1887, § 856, headed “Who considered of sound mind”: a person shall be considered of sound mind who is neither an idiot nor lunatic, nor affected with insanity, and who hath arrived at the age of fourteen years, or before that age, if such person know the distinction between good and evil. The companion sections are § 854 (definition of crime), § 855 (how intention is manifested), §§ 858–859 (lunatics and idiots), and § 860 (advising an irresponsible person to commit an offense) ↩
77. Compiled Laws of 1876, ch. 35, § 7, p. 249, carried as Revised Statutes of 1887, § 860, headed “Advising an irresponsible person to commit an offense”: any person counseling, advising or encouraging an infant under the age of ten years, a lunatic or an idiot to commit any offense shall be prosecuted for that offense as principal and suffer the same punishment as if he had committed it directly ↩
78. The revision of 1899 did not carry these sections forward. Division Five of the Revised Statutes of 1899, “Crimes and Criminal Procedure,” opens its Title I directly with the substantive offenses at § 4950, and its Title II, “General Provisions,” contains only chapters on accessories (§§ 5160–5161), bail, costs in cases having twenty defendants, and sentencing, fines and costs (§§ 5195–5203). The index to the revision lists the crimes under the offense chapters, §§ 4950–5159, and carries no entry for capacity, infancy or insanity. With no statutory age in the volume, the received common law governed ↩
79. Session Laws of Wyoming Territory, 1884 (Cheyenne, Wyoming: Democratic Leader Book and Job Print, 1884), ch. 53, “Juvenile Delinquents — An Act to provide for the education and training of juvenile delinquents”; text and imprint read from the volume, digital images, Internet Archive (Library of Congress Early State Records Project) (https://archive.org/details/esrp434459495 : accessed 12 August 2026). Printed in full as Revised Statutes of 1887, §§ 2332–2336: the child had to be under sixteen and convicted of an offense other than homicide, arson, or rape, and the county paid for his keep at not more than four dollars a week. It was replaced by Session Laws of Wyoming Territory, 1888 (Cheyenne, Wyoming: E. A. Slack, Printer and Binder, Daily Sun Office, 1888), ch. 57, §§ 1–2, printed as Revised Statutes of 1899, §§ 4930–4931, which moved the power to the district court and reached a resident child between ten and sixteen found on complaint and due proof to be a vagrant or so incorrigible that the child’s own welfare required commitment. Brooke Wunnicke, “The 1951 Juvenile Court Law of Wyoming,” 8 Wyoming Law Journal 173, 177–78 (1954), traces both acts. For a commitment order in practice see Kelsey v. Carroll, 22 Wyo. 85, 138 P. 867 (1913), discharging a fourteen-year-old whose order failed to show the jurisdictional facts of age and residence ↩
80. Wyo. Sess. Laws 1945, ch. 121, § 3, amending Revised Statutes of 1931, § 20-702, and appearing as Compiled Statutes (1945), § 58-602: proceedings under the section shall not be criminal proceedings, but shall be entitled “In the Interest of ______, a Minor Child,” and may be docketed and filed as probate proceedings or separately docketed as the court may direct; hearings may be held privately and informally and not before a jury, and the child shall have the right to counsel. Wunnicke, at 181–82. Wyo. Sess. Laws 1945, ch. 90, separately authorized county detention homes ↩
81. Brooke Wunnicke, “The 1951 Juvenile Court Law of Wyoming,” 8 Wyoming Law Journal 173, 176 (1954), the standard account of the act: the law of 1951 vested the jurisdiction in the district courts and designated the district judges as juvenile court judges, and Wyoming was the last state in the Union to enact one, fifty-two years after the first were established in Illinois and Colorado. It is codified as Compiled Statutes (1945), §§ 1-701 through 1-718 (1953 Cum. Supp.). Digital images, Law Archive of Wyoming Scholarship (https://scholarship.law.uwyo.edu/wlj/vol8/iss3/3 : accessed 12 August 2026). The enabling amendment, proposed in 1947 and ratified 2 November 1948, is Wyo. Const. art. 5, § 29 ↩
82. Revised Statutes of 1899, § 3680, headed “Who are competent witnesses”: all persons are competent witnesses except those of unsound mind and children under ten years of age who appear incapable of receiving just impressions of the facts and transactions respecting which they are examined, or of relating them truly. Carried from the Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2588, itself taken from the Revised Statutes of Ohio, § 5240 ↩
83. Revised Statutes of 1899, §§ 3681–3683, carried from the Revised Statutes of 1887, §§ 2589–2590, and the Revised Statutes of Ohio, §§ 5241–5242. Section 3681, from Wyo. Sess. Laws 1899, ch. 81, bars husband or wife from testifying against the other except in a criminal proceeding for a crime by one against the other, a civil action by one against the other, an action by the husband for criminal conversation with or seduction of his wife, or an action by either for alienation of the other’s affections, while allowing them to be witnesses for each other in all cases. Section 3682 lists the privileged communications — attorney and client, physician and patient, clergyman and penitent, and husband and wife as to communications during coverture, the rule surviving the end of the marriage. Section 3683 is the dead man’s statute ↩
84. The competency statute, Revised Statutes of 1899, § 3680, admits all persons and excepts only those of unsound mind and children under ten found incapable, and its predecessor at Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2588, does the same. Neither the competency sections nor the jury qualification sections of this period classify a witness or a juror by race. That is consistent with the repeal of the territorial marriage bar in 1882 and its re-enactment only in 1913: William E. Foster, “A Study of the Wyoming Miscegenation Statutes,” 10 Wyoming Law Journal 131 (1956) ↩

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