Notorious Woman: The Celebrated Case of Myra Clark Gaines (Southern Biography Series)

Amazon.com Price: $24.95 (as of 22/03/2019 20:47 PST- Details)

Categories: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Description

The legal crusade of Myra Clark Gaines (1804?–1885) has all of the trappings of classic melodrama — a lost heir, a missing will, an illicit relationship, a questionable marriage, a bigamous husband, and a murder. For a half century the daughter of New Orleans millionaire Daniel Clark struggled to justify her claim to his enormous fortune in a case that captivated the nineteenth-century public. Elizabeth Urban Alexander taps voluminous court records and letters to get to the bottom of the twists and turns of Gaines’s litigation and reveal the truth in the back of the mysterious saga of this notorious woman.
Myra, the daughter of real estate heir Clark and Zulime Carrière, a beautiful young Frenchwoman, Was once raised by friends of Clark and kept ignorant of her real parentage until 1832, when she found out her true lineage in letters among her foster father’s papers. She thereupon returned to Louisiana with tales of a lost will and a secret marriage between Clark and Carrière and claimed to be Clark’s missing heir. Was once Myra the legitimate daughter of the prominent merchant or the “fruit of an adulterous union?” The courts would make a decision.
The Great Gaines Case wound its tortuous path through the US legal system from 1834 until 1891. It Was once thought to be by the U.S. Supreme Court seventeen times and pursued even after Gaines’s death by lawyers trying to recoup fees. By courageously bringing her case to the courtroom and doggedly keeping it there, Alexander asserts, Gaines helped instigate a new type of circle of relatives law that provided special protection of women, children, and marriages.
Though Gaines never recovered more than a tiny fraction of the rumored millions, this riveting chronicle of her struggle for legitimacy and legacy as told by Elizabeth Urban Alexander is a gold mine for somebody interested in legal history, women’s studies, or a good yarn superbly spun.

Related products

Home » Shop » Books » Subjects » Arts and Photography » History and Criticism » History » Americas » United States » State and Local » Notorious Woman: The Celebrated Case of Myra Clark Gaines (Southern Biography Series)

Recent Products