December 1, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the nineteenth century, a woman’s future could collapse overnight. If a husband died, disappeared, or fell into debt, she often had no legal claim to the house she lived in. The Homestead Law changed that. As historian Jean Stuntz tells it, the law created a small but powerful shield that prevented families from losing the one thing they could not live without. It was far from perfect, yet for countless women who had no voice in court and no rights under most state laws, this protection meant stability—and it offered a kind of dignity that had rarely been within reach.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories, and as you know, we
tell stories about everything here on this show, and some
of our favorite stories well they're about history. And today
Faith brings us some law history from the state of Texas.
Take it away, Faith.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
If you have.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Traveled much to Europe or any other country outside the US,
you will see history dates from times like the twelfth
and thirteenth century, and it soon becomes clear that America
is actually a quite young country in comparison. With that
being said, we owe much of our jurisprudence, that is,
our law systems to other countries and the people that
(00:47):
came from them to the US. While the US adopted
English common law when becoming its own country, Texas was
a bit different when they became a state because of
the Spanish influence they had. Two of the laws that
the Spanish brought over to Texas greatly impacted women's rights
and freedoms. There was a time, unfortunately not terribly long
(01:08):
ago in our history, that women could not own property
or have any money of their own. If their husband
had debts to pay or owe taxes, the family's home
could be seized and taken, leaving the wife and children
homeless and helpless to keep this from happening. The Spanish
had brought with them their homestead exemption laws. To help
(01:28):
us unpack this long history of homestead laws, we have
doctor Jene Stunts, a professor at West Texas A and
M University.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
It starts back in Spain at the fall of the
Roman Empire. There were Visigoths who had come down from
the Germany area and settled in the Iberian Peninsula during
the Roman Empire, and these were Christian, because of course
the Roman Empire was officially Christian. Then when the Roman
Empire fell, the US were left pretty much unprotected and
(02:02):
they splintered into very small, little sort of kingdoms all
over the place. In the year sevent eleven, Muslims from
northern Africa invaded Spain, going through the Rock of Gibraltar
and very quickly conquered all of these little scattered kingdoms
because they couldn't work together to prevent it. And the
Muslims went all the way up through Spain, they crossed
(02:24):
the Pyrenees and went into France before they were finally stopped,
so that was in the year seven eleven. Well, the
people living in Spain who were still Christian wanted to
take their country back. Well, these guys in Spain would
go out and raid the nearest Muslim settlement, for women,
for jewels, whatever they could find. Gradually, the Christians took
(02:47):
over more and more territory until we get to the
time of Ferdinand and Isabella, when they completely conquer all
of the Iberian peninsulasm pushed the Muslims out. Now, during
this time, the seven centuries or so, it's when the
Spanish legal system developed, and there were towns in Spain,
(03:08):
and people lived in towns, they didn't really live out
in the countryside, and so you had more artisans and
crafts people there than you might have in other parts
of Europe where everybody just made everything themselves. So in
Spain there developed this law, this tradition that if a
man was in debt, you could not take away the
tools of his trade. That is, if he was a blacksmith,
(03:31):
you could not take his anvilan hammer to pay the taxes,
because then how could he raise the money to pay you.
How could he survive with his family if you took
away the tools of his trade. This became set in
stone in Spanish law that no matter how much a
man owed, you could not take his home, you could
(03:51):
not take the tools of his trade, because to do
that would be a ruination for his family that you
would have to find some other way for him to
pay debt. And so that's in Spain. And then we
know that Columbus came over to the New World and
discovered all the people living here already, and the Spanish
gradually moved northward from Mexico and into Texas. And so
(04:13):
for the first one hundred or so years of when
we have documentation of life in Texas, it was Spanish,
and this homestead exemption, as the English speaking people called it,
was recognized as something that worked pretty well. And since
a lot of the Anglos coming into Texas had left
behind a lot of debts back where they came from,
(04:36):
they really liked the fact that their land and their
cattle and their tools of their trade could not be
taken from them to pay their debts. And so when
Texas became a republican again, when it became a state,
they adopted this homestead exemption as rule of law in Texas,
and this lasted up until the twentieth century. Late twentieth
(04:57):
century when it was modified by the Texas legislature if
the homestead exemption had not been put in place, and
then what happened in the rest of what became the
United States. If a man got into too much debt,
his land could be seized, his house could be seized,
all of his property could be seized, and the family
would be turned out penniless, homeless. And this affected women
(05:21):
because married women were not allowed to own their own
property under the English common law that the rest of
the United States adopted. If a man gambled away his money,
it was the women and children who suffered. And of course,
women in those days had very little ways of earning
money to support themselves, and so the families would fall
on desperate times. Indeed, the other.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Law that Texas had from the Spanish was community property law.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
This is that whenever there's a husband and wife, anything
that is gained in the marriage is split equally between them,
and this comes from Spain because again, with all that
sporadic fighting that was going on during those centuries, it
became very important for women to have the ability to
take care of themselves, and especially as the Christian Spanish
(06:13):
slowly took over more and more land, they had to
get women to come settle in the new towns that
they created, and this was a dangerous area. There was
still fighting going on, and so they had to offer
the women more and more to get them to move
into this dangerous area. So they offered things like, well,
if you move to this town, we're going to give women,
(06:36):
even married women, the right to own their own bakeries,
and the money that they make with their bakeries will
belong to them and not their husbands. And so some
women said, you know, that makes it worthwhile to move
to a dangerous area. And so things like this happened,
and women gain more and more rights throughout this reconquest
of Spain, and so they also developed the community park
(07:00):
property system. Where As I said, anything that is gained
during the marriage belongs to the husband and wife equally,
and the rest of Europe everything belonged to the husband.
The wife owned nothing, She had no legal identity, she
could not make a contract, so she couldn't own a business,
she couldn't work for anyone because the husband would own
her wages. Even women committing crimes, it was the husband
(07:23):
who was punished. So that was in the rest of Europe,
but in Spain women had their own rights and responsibilities.
And again this came to Texas when the Spanish came
to Texas, and it was such a good system for
living on a frontier that the Texas legislature kind of thought,
you know, maybe we like this. And so during the Republic,
(07:47):
even though they said in law that they adopted the
English common law, people were saying, no, no, the women
still have the right to this property. And what is
really fun for a historian, not probably for anybody else,
But when I was reading the minutes of the Constitutional
Convention that would allow Texas to join the United States
(08:07):
in eighteen forty five, a lot of these delegates were
worried about the debts they had left behind in Georgia
and Alabama and so forth when they moved to Texas,
because Texas was a different country, so the people they
owed money to could not touch them in Texas. And
so in Texas they had been given all these huge
tracts of land and they were flourishing, and they did
(08:30):
not want those people back in Alabama and Georgia to
be able to come take their land to pay off
their debts. So there was a lot of hesitation about
joining the United States because of this. That they did
not want to lose their land. But there was a
lawyer and he became Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme
(08:50):
Court named Hemp Hill, and he had studied Spanish law,
and he was at the convention, and so he made
this speech and he says, you know, if we adopt
community property law like Spain had, then they cannot take
your land because half of it belongs to your wife
and not to you. And so this hushed silence sort
(09:12):
of fell over this convention of men who were anxious
to keep hold of their own property, and they said,
you know, that might work, and so they adopted the
community property system to keep their land from going to
their creditors. They didn't really care about giving women extra
rights or anything, because this was the eighteen forties and
(09:33):
they didn't expect women to have any rights. But if
they adopted this community property system, then their creditors could
not take their land. And so when Texas joined the
United States in eighteen forty five, it was with community
property firmly in place.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Homestead exemption and community property laws very state to state,
and the laws originally brought to texts from the Spanish
have been modified in different ways, although the male lawmakers
at the time were not too concerned about women's rights.
We can see that these laws in particular greatly impacted
women for years to come, and for that we can
(10:12):
thank the Texans.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And a special thanks to doctor Jean Stunts from West
Texas A and M University who gave us the history
and the story behind the story of where that law
came from. Great storytelling and by the way, all of
our stories about history are brought to us by the
great folks at Hillsdale College. The story of the Texas
homestead Exemption laws. Here on our American Stories
This is our American stories, and as you know, we
tell stories about everything here on this show, and some
of our favorite stories well they're about history. And today
Faith brings us some law history from the state of Texas.
Take it away, Faith.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
If you have.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Traveled much to Europe or any other country outside the US,
you will see history dates from times like the twelfth
and thirteenth century, and it soon becomes clear that America
is actually a quite young country in comparison. With that
being said, we owe much of our jurisprudence, that is,
our law systems to other countries and the people that
(00:47):
came from them to the US. While the US adopted
English common law when becoming its own country, Texas was
a bit different when they became a state because of
the Spanish influence they had. Two of the laws that
the Spanish brought over to Texas greatly impacted women's rights
and freedoms. There was a time, unfortunately not terribly long
(01:08):
ago in our history, that women could not own property
or have any money of their own. If their husband
had debts to pay or owe taxes, the family's home
could be seized and taken, leaving the wife and children
homeless and helpless to keep this from happening. The Spanish
had brought with them their homestead exemption laws. To help
(01:28):
us unpack this long history of homestead laws, we have
doctor Jene Stunts, a professor at West Texas A and
M University.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
It starts back in Spain at the fall of the
Roman Empire. There were Visigoths who had come down from
the Germany area and settled in the Iberian Peninsula during
the Roman Empire, and these were Christian, because of course
the Roman Empire was officially Christian. Then when the Roman
Empire fell, the US were left pretty much unprotected and
(02:02):
they splintered into very small, little sort of kingdoms all
over the place. In the year sevent eleven, Muslims from
northern Africa invaded Spain, going through the Rock of Gibraltar
and very quickly conquered all of these little scattered kingdoms
because they couldn't work together to prevent it. And the
Muslims went all the way up through Spain, they crossed
(02:24):
the Pyrenees and went into France before they were finally stopped,
so that was in the year seven eleven. Well, the
people living in Spain who were still Christian wanted to
take their country back. Well, these guys in Spain would
go out and raid the nearest Muslim settlement, for women,
for jewels, whatever they could find. Gradually, the Christians took
(02:47):
over more and more territory until we get to the
time of Ferdinand and Isabella, when they completely conquer all
of the Iberian peninsulasm pushed the Muslims out. Now, during
this time, the seven centuries or so, it's when the
Spanish legal system developed, and there were towns in Spain,
(03:08):
and people lived in towns, they didn't really live out
in the countryside, and so you had more artisans and
crafts people there than you might have in other parts
of Europe where everybody just made everything themselves. So in
Spain there developed this law, this tradition that if a
man was in debt, you could not take away the
tools of his trade. That is, if he was a blacksmith,
(03:31):
you could not take his anvilan hammer to pay the taxes,
because then how could he raise the money to pay you.
How could he survive with his family if you took
away the tools of his trade. This became set in
stone in Spanish law that no matter how much a
man owed, you could not take his home, you could
(03:51):
not take the tools of his trade, because to do
that would be a ruination for his family that you
would have to find some other way for him to
pay debt. And so that's in Spain. And then we
know that Columbus came over to the New World and
discovered all the people living here already, and the Spanish
gradually moved northward from Mexico and into Texas. And so
(04:13):
for the first one hundred or so years of when
we have documentation of life in Texas, it was Spanish,
and this homestead exemption, as the English speaking people called it,
was recognized as something that worked pretty well. And since
a lot of the Anglos coming into Texas had left
behind a lot of debts back where they came from,
(04:36):
they really liked the fact that their land and their
cattle and their tools of their trade could not be
taken from them to pay their debts. And so when
Texas became a republican again, when it became a state,
they adopted this homestead exemption as rule of law in Texas,
and this lasted up until the twentieth century. Late twentieth
(04:57):
century when it was modified by the Texas legislature if
the homestead exemption had not been put in place, and
then what happened in the rest of what became the
United States. If a man got into too much debt,
his land could be seized, his house could be seized,
all of his property could be seized, and the family
would be turned out penniless, homeless. And this affected women
(05:21):
because married women were not allowed to own their own
property under the English common law that the rest of
the United States adopted. If a man gambled away his money,
it was the women and children who suffered. And of course,
women in those days had very little ways of earning
money to support themselves, and so the families would fall
on desperate times. Indeed, the other.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Law that Texas had from the Spanish was community property law.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
This is that whenever there's a husband and wife, anything
that is gained in the marriage is split equally between them,
and this comes from Spain because again, with all that
sporadic fighting that was going on during those centuries, it
became very important for women to have the ability to
take care of themselves, and especially as the Christian Spanish
(06:13):
slowly took over more and more land, they had to
get women to come settle in the new towns that
they created, and this was a dangerous area. There was
still fighting going on, and so they had to offer
the women more and more to get them to move
into this dangerous area. So they offered things like, well,
if you move to this town, we're going to give women,
(06:36):
even married women, the right to own their own bakeries,
and the money that they make with their bakeries will
belong to them and not their husbands. And so some
women said, you know, that makes it worthwhile to move
to a dangerous area. And so things like this happened,
and women gain more and more rights throughout this reconquest
of Spain, and so they also developed the community park
(07:00):
property system. Where As I said, anything that is gained
during the marriage belongs to the husband and wife equally,
and the rest of Europe everything belonged to the husband.
The wife owned nothing, She had no legal identity, she
could not make a contract, so she couldn't own a business,
she couldn't work for anyone because the husband would own
her wages. Even women committing crimes, it was the husband
(07:23):
who was punished. So that was in the rest of Europe,
but in Spain women had their own rights and responsibilities.
And again this came to Texas when the Spanish came
to Texas, and it was such a good system for
living on a frontier that the Texas legislature kind of thought,
you know, maybe we like this. And so during the Republic,
(07:47):
even though they said in law that they adopted the
English common law, people were saying, no, no, the women
still have the right to this property. And what is
really fun for a historian, not probably for anybody else,
But when I was reading the minutes of the Constitutional
Convention that would allow Texas to join the United States
(08:07):
in eighteen forty five, a lot of these delegates were
worried about the debts they had left behind in Georgia
and Alabama and so forth when they moved to Texas,
because Texas was a different country, so the people they
owed money to could not touch them in Texas. And
so in Texas they had been given all these huge
tracts of land and they were flourishing, and they did
(08:30):
not want those people back in Alabama and Georgia to
be able to come take their land to pay off
their debts. So there was a lot of hesitation about
joining the United States because of this. That they did
not want to lose their land. But there was a
lawyer and he became Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme
(08:50):
Court named Hemp Hill, and he had studied Spanish law,
and he was at the convention, and so he made
this speech and he says, you know, if we adopt
community property law like Spain had, then they cannot take
your land because half of it belongs to your wife
and not to you. And so this hushed silence sort
(09:12):
of fell over this convention of men who were anxious
to keep hold of their own property, and they said,
you know, that might work, and so they adopted the
community property system to keep their land from going to
their creditors. They didn't really care about giving women extra
rights or anything, because this was the eighteen forties and
(09:33):
they didn't expect women to have any rights. But if
they adopted this community property system, then their creditors could
not take their land. And so when Texas joined the
United States in eighteen forty five, it was with community
property firmly in place.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Homestead exemption and community property laws very state to state,
and the laws originally brought to texts from the Spanish
have been modified in different ways, although the male lawmakers
at the time were not too concerned about women's rights.
We can see that these laws in particular greatly impacted
women for years to come, and for that we can
(10:12):
thank the Texans.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And a special thanks to doctor Jean Stunts from West
Texas A and M University who gave us the history
and the story behind the story of where that law
came from. Great storytelling and by the way, all of
our stories about history are brought to us by the
great folks at Hillsdale College. The story of the Texas
homestead Exemption laws. Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Male Room with Dr. Jesse Mills
As Director of The Men’s Clinic at UCLA, Dr. Jesse Mills has spent his career helping men understand their bodies, their hormones, and their health. Now he’s bringing that expertise to The Male Room — a podcast where data-driven medicine meets common sense. Each episode separates fact from hype, science from snake oil, and gives men the tools to live longer, stronger, and happier lives. With candor, humor, and real-world experience from the exam room and the operating room, Dr. Mills breaks down the latest health headlines, dissects trends, and explains what actually works — and what doesn’t. Smart, straightforward, and entertaining, The Male Room is the show that helps men take charge of their health without the jargon.