The first woman in America to keep her birth name after marriage was the feminist Lucy Stone, who wed Henry Blackwell in 1855. The two of them published their vows, which doubled as a protest against marriage laws that “refuse[d] to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess.” (Stone was later barred from voting in a school board election under her maiden name.)
