ABSTRACT
In the spring of 1762, four widows in the town of Gävle, Sweden, appealed to the Crown. Anna Stens, Lisa Tideman, Christina Efwerdts and Greta Wanberg complained in a letter that they had been deprived of their rights to cultivate parts of the town’s land. 1 They argued strongly for their rights as burghers’ widows. The town administration’s decision to evict them from the land made them declare that ‘a burgher’s conditions … cannot be worse than a crofter’s or a rustic’s, for the difference that exists between land owners and rustics does not at all exist between the Town Administration and Burghers’. A strong argument on the part of the complaining burghers’ widows was that, unlike the widows of the members of the administration, they contributed ‘burghers’ burdens’—that is, the taxes and charges that went with burghership.
