est is that they will give
such advice and assistance to my dear Wife as they shall think prudent
with respect to the management and disposal of my very small Estate....
I appoint my dear Wife excutrix of this my will...."[304]

Samuel Peters, writing in his _General History of Connecticut_, 1781,
mentions this incident: "In 1740, Mrs. Cursette, an English lady,
travelling from New York to Boston, was obliged to stay some days at
Hebron; where, seeing the church not finished, and the people suffering
great persecutions, she told them to persevere in their good work, and
she would send them a present when she got to Boston. Soon after her
arrival there, Mrs. Cursette fell sick and died. In her will she gave a
legacy of L300 old tenor ... to the church of England in Hebron; and
appointed John Hancock, Esq., and Nathaniel Glover, her executors.
Glover was also her residuary legatee. The will was obliged to be
recorded in Windham county, because some of Mrs. Cursette's lands lay
there. Glover sent the will by Deacon S.H. ---- of Canterbury, ordering
him to get it recorded and keep it private, lest the legacy should build
up the church. The Deacon and Register were faithful to their trust, and
kept Glover's secret twenty-five years. At length the Deacon was taken
ill, and his life was supposed in great danger.... The secret was
disclosed."

It is evident that the colonial woman, either as spinster or as widow,
was not without considerable legal power in matters of property, and it
is evident too that she now and then managed or disposed of such
property in a manner displeasing to the other sex. As shown in the above
incident of the church money, trickery was now and then tried in an
effort to set aside the wishes of a woman concerning her possessions;
but, in the main, her decisions and bequests seem to have received as
much respect from courts as those of the men.

A further instance of this feminine right to hold and manage
property--perhaps a little too radical to be typical--is to be found in
the career of the famous Margaret Brent of Maryland, the first woman in
the world to demand a seat in the parliamentary body of a commonwealth.
A woman of unusual intellect, decisiveness, and leadership, she came
from England to Maryland in 1638, and quickly became known as the equal,
if not the superior, of any man in the colony for comprehension of the
intricacies of English law dealing with property and decedents. Her
brothers