Walker v. Stringfellow

• Decision Date: 31 January 1868
• Citation: 30 Tex. 570
• Parties: EDWARD B. WALKER ET UX. v. CHESLEY STRINGFELLOW.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

30 Tex. 570

EDWARD B. WALKER ET UX.

v.CHESLEY STRINGFELLOW.

Supreme Court of Texas.

January, 1868.

During the marriage the husband has the sole management of the separate property of his wife. Pas. Dig. art. 4641. But if the husband separate from the wife, and leave her to the management of her property, and he does not contribute to her support and maintenance, such a condition of affairs invests her with authority to sell her property without his concurrence. Pas. Dig. p. 778, note 1050.

A feme covert is no more allowed to practice fraud in the sale of her property than a single woman.

The husband and wife resided in Texas, where she owned a slave; she returned to Georgia, where the husband left her, and they remained separate for three years, during which time she sold her slave. Having afterwards resumed her marital relations with her husband, this suit was brought to recover the slave and her increase: Held, that they could not recover.

APPEAL from Brazoria. The case was tried before Hon. GEORGE W. SMITH, one of the district judges.

Judgment was rendered on the 10th day of October, 1859. The facts are sufficiently stated in the opinion of the court. It may not be improper to remark, however, that before the decision of the supreme court the slaves had become free, and there remained nothing but a question of costs.

No brief for the appellant has been furnished to the reporter.

Munson & Lathrop, for the appellee.

LINDSAY, J.

The appellants are man and wife, married in 1840, in the county of Brazoria, state of Texas. At the time of the marriage, the wife was the owner of a negro girl in her own separate right. Before the institution of this suit the girl gave birth to several children. In the year 1841, the year after their marriage, the appellant, Caroline E. Walker, went to the state of Georgia, where her mother and other relations lived, leaving the negro girl in Texas. Some months afterwards the husband joined the wife in the state of Georgia. A short time after this the husband returned to Texas, leaving his wife in Georgia, and remained absent from his family about three years. During the separation, one Tod Robinson, at the request of the brother of the wife, took charge of the girl, as agent, and hired her out. He took charge of her in 1842, and continued his control over her until 1844, when an agent of the wife appeared in Texas, with a power of attorney from her, authorizing him to sell the girl. The agent proved that, at the time of the execution of the power of attorney to him, the wife represented that she and her husband had separated, and she exhibited to him a letter from her husband, in which he said he would have nothing more to do with her or her property; that he, with this power of attorney, came on to Texas, and finding the girl contracted to be sold by an agent of the wife, created by letter, he ratified the contract, received the purchase money, and on his return to Georgia paid it over to the wife, his principal. The defendant in this suit derives his title from that purchaser. Subsequently the husband and wife came together again, and this suit was not instituted till 1857. The girl in the meantime had given birth to two or three children, all...