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

Alexander, Elizabeth Urban

9780807126981: Notorious Woman: The Celebrated Case of Myra Clark Gaines (Southern Biography Series)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807126985 ISBN 13: 9780807126981

Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr, 2001

The legal crusade of Myra Clark Gaines (1804?-1885) has all the trappings of classical melodrama--a lost heir, a missing will, an illicit relationship, a questionable marriage, a bigamous husband, and a murder. For half a 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 unravel the twists and turns of Gaines's litigation and reveal the truth behind the mysterious saga of this notorious woman.

Myra, the daughter of real estate heir Clark and Zulume Carriere, a beautiful young Frenchwoman, was raised by friends of Clark and kept ignorant of her real parentage until 1832, when she discovered 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 Carriere and claimed to be Clark's missing heir. Was Myra the legitimate daughter of the prominent merchant, or the "fruit of an adulterous union?" The courts would decide.

The great Gaines Case wound it tortuous path through the United States legal system from 1834 until 1891. It was considered 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 family 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 goldmine for anyone interested in legal history, women's studies, or a good yarn superbly spun.

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About the Author:

Elizabeth Urban Alexander is visiting assistant professor of history and interdisciplinary studies at Texas Wesleyan University.

From Publishers Weekly:

Myra Clark Gaines was 25 and about to be married when she discovered that the couple who had raised her were not her birth parents and that she was the daughter of one of the richest men in America, Daniel Clark. Thus began Myra's lifelong involvement with the courts, as she sought to prove her claim as a legitimate heir to her father's fortune. Her suit hinged on her status under Louisiana law; if she were "legitimate," then she would be entitled to four-fifths of her father's very considerable holdings. She need not have been born in wedlock a paternal declaration would do unless she were an "adulterous bastard," the product of a union in which at least one partner was married to someone else. Her claim was vigorously opposed by the executors of Clark's will, acting on behalf of his heirs. The stage was set for more than 50 years of litigation in which Myra played the role of heroine of a sentimental romance and gained the sympathy of a nation. This southern Louisiana Bleak House came to a predictable end: Myra recovered a tiny portion of the original millions and left her own heirs to split $60,000, a sum still being litigated years after her death. Alexander's painstakingly researched and documented account fully explores every facet of the affair; however, whether Myra represents a heroic woman transgressing 19th-century legal boundaries or merely another obsessed and combative heir is less certain.

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