Quite Contrary: The Litigious Life of Mary Bennett Love

Awards:   Winner of WILLA Literary Award (Scholarly Nonfiction) 2015
Author:   David Langum ,  Gordon Morris Bakken
Publisher:   Texas Tech Press,U.S.
ISBN:  

9780896728745


Pages:   256
Publication Date:   30 May 2014
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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Quite Contrary: The Litigious Life of Mary Bennett Love


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Awards

  • Winner of WILLA Literary Award (Scholarly Nonfiction) 2015

Overview

Mary Bennett Love had a physicality exceeded only by her personality. Six feet tall and over 300 pounds, Love was anything but shackled by the mores of her day. In the 1840s, she moved west from Arkansas via the Oregon Trail. A few years later, she separated from her husband and took her six minor children to Santa Clara, where she acquired a Mexican land grant by forging an adult son’s signature. Though illiterate, she knew the law thoroughly and used it to her advantage. No sooner had the American military invaded California than Mary squatted on public lands and engaged in dozens of lawsuits to advance her interests. Her love life was no less tumultuous. Harry Love, her second husband and slayer of Mexican bandit Joaquin Murrieta, died at her bodyguard’s hands. Quite Contrary is the first book to focus on Mary Bennett Love. Aside from making for an entertaining story, she is representative of the relationship people had with the law in pre-Gold Rush California. Furthermore, her economic success demonstrates the often self-imposed notions of true womanhood - which Mary ignored, paving the way for future female entrepreneurs.

Full Product Details

Author:   David Langum ,  Gordon Morris Bakken
Publisher:   Texas Tech Press,U.S.
Imprint:   Texas Tech Press,U.S.
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.468kg
ISBN:  

9780896728745


ISBN 10:   0896728749
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   30 May 2014
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

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Reviews

Early California's socio-legal history has been told in general terms, but here we have an individual story of Mary Bennett Love, a working class nineteenth-century woman, battling to protect her property. This is good stuff, and readers interested in early California or frontier history, women's history, or legal history deserve to read about Mary Bennett Love's amazing life. --Mark R. Ellis, author of Law and Order in Buffalo Bill's Country: Legal Culture and Community in Lincoln County, Nebraska, 1868-1910


Author Information

David J. Langum, Sr is Research Professor of Law at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama. He has written eight books in the field of legal history and biography, with a concentration in western America.

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