17th Century Swedish Bridal Land Part 1

British Emigration to Sweden And Land 

Mary Elizabeth Ailes is the the author for this book Military Migration and State Formation. She is my professor for Seventeenth Century History. She sure did write a fantastic book that I highly recommend. Here are excerpts in regards to housing....

"Beyond land donations, officers gained control of land through marriage, inheritance, and purchase."

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flemish_Wedding_17th_century.jpg

"Marriage was one of the most common and the easiest means for foreign officers to acquire land. When a marriage occurred, the father of the bride provided his daughter with a dowry, which sometimes included land or the rent from specific properties. After the marriage took place, the bride received a morning gift from her husband, which could consist of land or money. The land that a woman brought to her marriage and the property she received as her morning gift technically belonged to her, but her husband managed them for the duration of the union. Upon the husband's death, the wife's property was supposed to revert back to her biological family to provide for her financial support. Unfortunately, this did not always happen, as men's families sometimes attempted to maintain control of the property even after the marriage had ended."

http://www.artvalue.com/auctionresult--thomez-menotti-19-20-a-17th-century-boyar-wedding-f-1622633.htm

"An example of this was the fight that occurred between Hugo Hamilton and the family of Gustaf Adolf Skytte over the right of Hamilton's daughter, Brita to her morning gift after the death of her husband, Gustaf Adolf Skytte. Brita and Gustaf Adolf were married in 1659...." To read more, I highly suggest the book! But, to make a story short, she brought a manor house and its property and when her husband died (a true intrigue) his heirs fought for her dower property.

Mary Ailes. Military Migration and State Formation.  (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.), 86.