Record of Married Women's Separate Property 1862-1872, Baker Co., Oregon ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access and not to be removed separately without written permission. ************************************************************************ Transcribed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: W. David Samuelsen - April 2002 - not copyrightable ************************************************************************ Introduction from Works Progress Administration's booklet "Record of Married Women's Separate Property in Baker County, 1862-72" 1942 These lists, with their quaint but vivid descriptions, particularly of cattle, were taken directly from "Record of Married Women's Separate Property in the County of Baker, State of Oregon", while what is now the ghost town of Auburn was still the county seat. The little record book, much of it in the handwriting of Samuel A. Clarke, the first county clerk of Baker County and later a well known historian and poet, is preserved in the basement vaults of the Baker County courthouse. Such a separate inventory of women's property has not been found in any other court house in Oregon. It is interesting as showing that in the early 1860's, at least in the freer enviroment of a gold mining region, women had considerable rights of their own. The nature of the property, not at allpredominatly of household goods and other feminine possessions, is also interesting. Mining claims, store buildings, horses and oxen are described with minute exactness, recreating in vivid detail these long vanished ghosts of possessions. 1 volume Arranged chronologically. Handwritten. Condition, poor. (Binding gone.) 50 pp. 8X 12 x 1/4. County Clerk's basement vault.