Case Name: The Inhabitants of Taunton versus The Inhabitants of Plymouth
Court: Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Jurisdiction: Massachusetts
Decision Date: 1818-07
Citations: 14 Tyng 203
Docket Number: 
Parties: The Inhabitants of Taunton versus The Inhabitants of Plymouth.
Judges: 
Reporter: Massachusetts Reports
Volume: 15
Pages: 189–190

Head Matter:
The Inhabitants of Taunton versus The Inhabitants of Plymouth.
A male pauper, being married while under age, was not thereby so emancipated as to acquire a settlement by a year’s residence without warning out, prior to the provincial act of 7 Geo. 3, c. 3.
Assumpsit for the support of Susannah Tisdale, a pauper, deriving her settlement from her father, Abraham Tisdale. The said Abraham was bom in Taunton, in June, 1745, and, when seventeen or eighteen years of age, he went to Plymouth to work. On the 7th of November, 1765, he was married in Plymouth, having been duly published, his father consenting to the marriage, and he being then twenty years and four months old. He continued to reside in Plymouth from the time he first went there until after the tenth of April, 1767; and his father used to take part of his wages, before and after he was married, until he came of age.
If the time of his minority, after his marriage, was to be accounted part of the residence of one year, prior to the 10th of April, 1767, within the meaning of the provincial act of 7 Geo. 3, c. 3, the defendants were to be defaulted, and an auditor, to be appointed by the Court, was to assess the plaintiffs’ damages; otherwise, the plaintiffs were to become nonsuit
J. M. Williams for the plaintiffs.
W. Baylies and N. M. Davis for the defendants

Opinion:
Parker, C. J.
The pauper for whose support the action is brought had no settlement in Plymouth, unless her father acquired one there by his residence for a year before the 10th of April, 1767. But, to acquire a settlement by such residence, the party must be of full age during the term of his residence: it is agreed he was not of full age ; but as he was married at Plymouth with the assent of his father, it * is supposed that he became emancipated, so as to be capable of gaining a settlement by himself.
Our laws, however, know of no such emancipation; or, at least, do not recognize such consequences of it. The marriage, in this case, may have removed the pauper's father, Abraham Tisdale, from the control of his father, and perhaps have given him a right, as against his father, to apply all his earnings to the support of his family. But it did not give him a capacity to make binding contracts, beyond other infants; or any political or municipal rights, which do not belong by law to minors.
We are all clear, therefore, that, by his residence in Plymouth for the time mentioned, without being warned out, although married, he did not gain a settlement in that town ; so that the present action cannot be maintained,
Plaintiffs nonsuit.
Vide Charlestown vs. Boston, 13 Mass. Rep. 469