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To Daniel Townsend, West Chester, Penn. After discussing various legislative matters, including the West Chester Rail Road and “the usual appropriation…for the Asylum for the insane poor”, Williamson adds, “The bill in favor of the rights of Married Women was negatived in the House on Saturday by a very decided vote, so there is an end to that question at present.” In the first half the 19th century, under American law, which followed British precedent, when a woman married, she surrendered to her husband any right to control property she had owned while single, nor did she have rights to acquire, transfer or sell property of her own during marriage. A married woman could not make contracts, control her own wages or profits, bring a lawsuit, or execute a will. One ironic exception was in Mississippi, where married women were given limited property rights – to own their own slaves. In 1848, the New York legislature, goaded by early feminists like Paulina Wright Davis (see Elizabeth Blackwell letter elsewhere in this sale) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, passed the nation’s first comprehensive Married Women’s Property Act. This letter was written the year before, recording that Pennsylvania legislators failed to beat New York to the punch in rectifying this legal inequality.