Freeholder
FREEHOLDER
FREEHOLDER. A freeholder is the owner of a land or estate, either for life or with inheritance rights. Tenure of land by giving service or paying rent is the common law equivalent of absolute ownership and became the prevailing system in the colonies. The colonial laws, influenced by the county franchise system of England and Wales, attached great importance to the possession of a freehold both for suffrage and officeholding. The democratic forces released by the American Revolution soon attacked such restrictions on the right to vote, and while the freeholder retained his privileged position in a few states until the Jacksonian era, universal suffrage became dominant in American politics.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cantor, Norman F. Imagining the Law: Common Law and the Foundations of the American Legal System. New York: Harper-Collins, 1997.
Nelson, William Edward. Americanization of the Common Law: The Impact of Legal Change on Massachussetts Society, 1760–1830. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975.
W. A.Robinson/a. e.
See alsoCharter of Liberties ; Feudalism ; Primogeniture ; Republicanism ; Suffrage, Colonial .