| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Mary Beth Sievens. Stray Wives: Marital Conflict in Early National New England. New York: New York University Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 171. $50.00.
The starting point for this wonderful monograph is 778 "elopement notices" published in newspapers in Windsor County, Vermont, and Harford County, Connecticut, between 1790 and 1830. The notices published in that period often contained fascinating tidbits of information about those publishing the announcements—their marital relationships, economic problems, and motivations for exposing family life to public view. But Mary Beth Sievens ranges far beyond the notices themselves to paint a picture of marital life in early New England. Gathering additional evidence from census data, court files, birth and death records, probate documents, legal treatises, sermons, prescriptive literature, and secondary sources, she explores the "space" married men and women retained to shape their lives.	1
The moniker for the notices—"elopement"—did not suggest anything like the contemporary notion of slipping away for a quick marriage. It was derived from the content of many of the newspaper postings: allegations by one spouse that his or her mate had abandoned the marital household. A variety of other claims were also made: about infidelity; about wives failing to obey their husbands, observe reasonable spending practices, or run a proper household; and about husbands failing to support their families or abusing their wives. The notices are a rich catalog of marital disharmony and disarray.	. . .

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