This article aims to determine when, where, and under what circumstances the first chattel mortgage statutes arose. This article first examines the southern colonial statutes mentioned in those early American appellate opinions and traces them to their earliest version. The article then explores analogous Anglo-American recording statutes for personalty, some mentioned in the early American appellate opinions as potential sources of the southern colonial chattel mortgage acts. These two investigations establish that the first chattel mortgage acts arose in the Chesapeake colonies during the mid-seventeenth century, shortly after the development of the nonpossessory secured transaction. The article then analyzes the earliest reported southern American opinions, from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, for clues to the circumstances giving rise to the first chattel mortgage acts. Lastly, the article reviews the scanty legislative history concerning these first chattel mortgage acts. These latter two investigations suggest that southern colonial legislatures first passed these statutes to eliminate the secret lien problem for judgment creditors.
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