Age Of Marriage In 19th Century.

[Nevo]

Now wait a minute--what was the distribution? An average of "22 or 23" tells us very little. 100% of the population marrying at 22 would give "average age of 22 or 23." But so would 50% marrying at 12, and 50% marrying at 33.

An "average age of 22 or 23" could very well exist in a society where it was not unusual at all to marry at 14.

I don't have the statistics for mid-century but the child marriage rate for females (age 15 and under) in the late 1800s was between 0.3 and 0.4 percent (see Monahan, 540). It was probably similar in the 1840s. I don't think there was ever a time in American history when it was "not unusual" for fourteen-year-olds to marry.

[Fatherof4]

Now wait a minute--what was the distribution? An average of "22 or 23" tells us very little. 100% of the population marrying at 22 would give "average age of 22 or 23." But so would 50% marrying at 12, and 50% marrying at 33.

An "average age of 22 or 23" could very well exist in a society where it was not unusual at all to marry at 14.

I think every family has a history of young marriages. I have an interesting situation where a 16 year old boy married a 19 year old girl with a child. She seems to have been a widow. This was in the 1830's.

Thank you Dale for pointing out that Helen Mar Whitney was probably a platonic relationship. There was a precedent in Utah, that some 14 and 15 year olds were married in polygamous relationships that were consumated when the girl was older. I think that could of been the case with Helen, but eventually if the prophet had lived long enough it would have been consumated.

I could go into all kinds of rambling, but I have some final thoughts. I always feared the worst about Joseph Smith. That he might have been some kind of libertine. I held the question until I had further resources and knowledge. Interestingly as I studied the last years of Joseph's life he seemed consumed with revealing the temple ordinances and becoming "sealed" to his friends and fellow church leaders. Plural marriage seems to have been an appendage of the temple rituals and also a binding tie to his friends through marrying a daughter or sister. I am sure that sex had something to do with plural marriage, but far less than our 21st century thinking usually takes us.

Fatherof4

Fatherof4

[kamenraider]

I have read that plus one inviting the Bishop Whitney, his wife and Sarah to meet with Joseph Smith. But Sarah wasn't dropped off to be with Joseph Smith and it was for a religious ceremony. Joseph Kingsbury did later term his marriage to Sarah as pretended. But he may have meant that he regarded himself as a surrogate husband in Joseph's place, so had no real right to claim here.

If Joseph Smith's marriage to Sarah Ann Whitney were celibate, I think there would have been no need to pretend that she was married to Bro. Kingsbury. Compton writes, on pg. 349 of In Sacred Lonliness , "The references to 'posterity' and the 'rights' of marriage suggest that the marriage would have a physical dimension, consistent with the evidence for Joseph's other marriages." Also, there's the reference to David being anointed, etc., and (later on) Heber C. Kimball and Sarah's three successive sons being named "David".

[Loquacious Lurker]

Bluebell and Dale both seem to gravitate toward the belief that the Helen Mar Kimball marriage was platonic. I have my doubts about that, ONLY because of a quote from Helen herself:

"I would never have been sealed to Joseph had I known it was anything more than ceremony. I was young, and they deceived me, by saying the salvation of our whole family depended on it."

"Anything other than ceremony" seems to imply, well, something other than ceremony. I don't want to turn this into a debate about "polygamy's sole existence had to do with producing seed", since I believe that can be proved without question, AND because Orpheus' warning is ringing in my ears.

I am descended from polygamists on both sides of my family. I have a great aunt who married at age fourteen (in 1930). As Charity said, it is easy to find examples of child marriages right inside any family. What I was interested in was the popular literature of the day bearing out what was happening in reality, and whether it was treated in a negative or positive manner. To avoid presentism, a knowledge of what was being said in the day is vital. Personally, I find the HMK scenario rather deplorable. Sorry, but I can't help it. Which is why I wanted to know what was being said of the matter in JS's day, because THAT would be the true gauge of what was acceptable behavior. It seems polygamy was deemed repulsive by non-Mormons in his day, just as in ours. However, young brides were not held in such a light. They might have been unusual, but they were not unknown.

[LifeOnaPlate]

That's very interesting but we shouldn't assume that such cases were the norm. Very young marriages were rare actually.

I think the whole situation is pretty rare, overall.

[Homestar Runner]

Lesson #1 --- A latter day "prophet" can make serious mis-judgments as to what is right and wrong, and his/her prophet's mantle offers no protection from our inspection of these matters.

Lesson #2 --- Human free agency is God-given and we ought to remember that.

Lesson #3 --- These sorts of threads tend to get some people upset, but that may not be a bad thing.

I'm pretty content to leave things with that. Maybe add:

Suggestion #1 --- Sometimes God allows His children to figure things out for themselves, by not correcting them as they engage in innapropriate behavior, allowing them to face the consequenses, and mature by self-discipline.

HSR

p.s. You are one of my favorite posters. I wept at your poem about how RLDS folks are having hard times.

[T-Shirt]

Bluebell and Dale both seem to gravitate toward the belief that the Helen Mar Kimball marriage was platonic. I have my doubts about that, ONLY because of a quote from Helen herself:

"I would never have been sealed to Joseph had I known it was anything more than ceremony. I was young, and they deceived me, by saying the salvation of our whole family depended on it."

Are you aware that this is not a quote by Helen herself? It is a statement by a woman named Catherine Lewis, who left the Church after two years in Nauvoo. She claimed that she heard Helen make this statement to her mother. Helen, in later years, actually wrote quite a bit about her feelings regarding plural marriage. This statement by Catherine Lewis is not consistent with anything Helen, herself, wrote.

T-Shirt

[juliann]

I don't have the statistics for mid-century but the child marriage rate for females (age 15 and under) in the late 1800s was between 0.3 and 0.4 percent (see Monahan, 540). It was probably similar in the 1840s. I don't think there was ever a time in American history when it was "not unusual" for fourteen-year-olds to marry.

And yet the age of consent is 14 in Hawaii and So. Carolina today.

[Scott Lloyd]

Are you aware that this is not a quote by Helen herself? It is a statement by a woman named Catherine Lewis, who left the Church after two years in Nauvoo. She claimed that she heard Helen make this statement to her mother. Helen, in later years, actually wrote quite a bit about her feelings regarding plural marriage. This statement by Catherine Lewis is not consistent with anything Helen, herself, wrote.

T-Shirt

Thanks for the elucidation, T-Shirt.

Funny how relevant facts and context get left out in discussions of this nature.

[katherine the great]

I don't have the statistics for mid-century but the child marriage rate for females (age 15 and under) in the late 1800s was between 0.3 and 0.4 percent (see Monahan, 540). It was probably similar in the 1840s. I don't think there was ever a time in American history when it was "not unusual" for fourteen-year-olds to marry.

I don't think these statistics could possibly only apply to a woman's FIRST marriage. Looking at my genealogy, age of first marriage seems very heavily influenced by region. My female ancestors from New England married much later (22 at the youngest, and 30 thirty the oldest) for first marriages. About half of my female ancestors married more than once due to death of husband, and usually entered into a second marriage around age 40. My western female ancestors married much younger (age 15, 16 or 17 was the most common.)

Women in established New England communities modeled themselves after Victorian England standards, and marrying at age 30 would have been very common. Life on the frontier during the same years, though usually meant much earlier marriage. They didn't have the leisure time to travel and such that Eastern women did.

[Dale]

I actually regard Helen as making the statement attributed to her by Catherine Lewis. But I don't interpret it as far as Catharene did. I think all she meant was she was told it was a sealing for eternity only. That she didn't realize what she had gotten herself into. That they witheld from her information about the obligations plural marriage entailed. The part about other's decieving her may be mis-remembering the conversation. She even could have honestly had mixed feelings about polygamy, and said she had at the time felt decieved.

She was not reputed to have said that Joseph and her ever had a honey-moon.

With Helen she had said something to the effect that the step she had taken was for eternity alone. This was in regards to her sealing to Joseph Smith. I took that statement to mean marital relations did not go with the arrangement.

You are off topic since others have gone back to topic more posts like this one will be deleted instead of closing the thread. No sex threads! ~ Mods

LAST WARNING

[Jaybear]

off topic posts now being deleted. This thread is about the age of marriage.

[ed2276]

Hi.

I've been accused of rampant presentism in this particular area. Well. Okay.

I've heard all the arguments condeming JS for marrying a girl who was, for all practical purposes, a girl. What exactly are the proofs that a fourteen-year-old was considered a woman? Are there any sort of "smoking gun" passages that are contemporaneous that would point to its being, if not widely practised, at least considered unremarkable?

In reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Lydia Bennett marries at sixteen. The novel was published in 1813. Also, I think Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote of a thirteen year old who marries in one of her books.

Any other references in popular literature of the time that you know of?

It's alright to ask this question from a presentist POV. In fact , I suggest you look at the states' marriagable age laws on the books presently and you may be surprised at what you see.

[Alf O'Mega]

It may not be a good idea to form our impressions of what was typical in the past based on how our ancestors behaved. In the case of marriage age, it seems likely that those who married younger had more time to bear children and are therefore overrepresented in the pedigree charts of today's population. Calculating the average marriage age in the nineteenth century requires counting many marriages of people who have no surviving posterity today. Those of us left to marvel at how young our ancestors married are possibly here only because of that choice. (Anthropic principle, anybody?)

That said, I couldn't find any of my nineteenth-century ancestresses marrying younger than sixteen, with the majority marrying in their twenties.

[Pepcigirl]

Downloaded this awhile ago about Marriage ages in the UK,

"First mention of a legal age limit being set in 1754, following the Hardwick Act. subsecquent legislation effectively set "full age" at 21 years for both sexes. The minmum age for marriage "with consent remained at 12 for a girl and 14 for a boy. This was unchanged in English law until 1929 when the minmum age was raised to 16 for both sexes with parental consent (or license from the court) or 21 (full age) without consent (until 1969 when it was lowered to 18 for both sexes)." (marriage.about.com)

[ed2276]

Now wait a minute--what was the distribution? An average of "22 or 23" tells us very little. 100% of the population marrying at 22 would give "average age of 22 or 23." But so would 50% marrying at 12, and 50% marrying at 33.

An "average age of 22 or 23" could very well exist in a society where it was not unusual at all to marry at 14.

I think all this statistical mumbo-jumbo claiming 19th century marriage at a young was rare is nonsense. I can't remember which thread it was in , but a poster in another thread made mention of this claim we see in this thread that 19th century marriages at a young age were rare. The poster in the other thread provided a link to the statistical evidence on which he based the claim and interestingly enough it wasn't based on an actual study of 19th century marriage records , census records , etc. to determine the actual ages at which marriages were happening. It didn't do that because such a compilation of marriage ages weren't available until 1890. What the statisticians did was to take current trends in the 20th century and extrapolate backwards what marriage ages "might" have been in the 19th century up to 1890.

The claims here that marriage at a young age in the 19th century was rare ought to be taken with a grain of salt.

[Confidential Informant]

Here are the modern statutes:

* Alabama: 18, 16 with parental consent (statute).

* Alaska: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Arizona: no statutory minimum, those under 18 must have parental consent, those under 16 must receive approval of a superior court judge and parental consent. (statute)

* Arkansas: 18, 16 for females and 17 for males with parental consent.

* California: no statutory minimum, those under 18 must receive approval of a superior court judge and parental consent.

* Colorado: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Connecticut: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* District of Columbia: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Delaware: 18, 16 for females with parental consent.

* Florida: 18, 16 with parental consent

* Georgia: 18 generally, 15 with parental consent, 16 without parental consent if pregnant

* Hawaii: 18, 15 with parental consent.

* Idaho: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Illinois: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Indiana: 18, 17 with parental consent.

* Iowa: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Kansas: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Kentucky: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Louisiana: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Maine: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Massachusetts: 18 generally for first marriage, 16 with parental and judicial consent [29].

* Maryland: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Michigan: 18 generally, 16 with parental consent. 15 and under with parental consent and probate judge approval.

* Minnesota: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Mississippi: 17 for males, 15 for females, unlimited with parental consent.

* Missouri: 18, 15 with parental consent.

* Montana: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Nebraska: 19, 17 with parental consent.

* Nevada: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* New Hampshire: 18 generally; 14 for males and 13 for females, in cases of "special cause" with parental consent and court permission.

* New Jersey: 18 generally, 16 with parental consent.

* New Mexico: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* New York: 18 generally, 16 with parental consent, 14 with parental and judicial consent.

* North Carolina: 18 generally, 16 with parental consent, unlimited in case of pregnancy or birth of child with parental consent.

* North Dakota: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Ohio: 18 for males, 16 for females. Parental consent needed for minors.

* Oklahoma: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Oregon: 18 generally, 17 with parental consent. The consenting parent or guardian must accompany the applicant when applying for the marriage license. There is no waiver for anyone under the age of 17.

* Pennsylvania: 18 generally, 16 with Birth Certificate and written consent of parent or guardian. Anyone under the age of 16 needs parental consent and the approval of a Judge of the Orphans Court. (statute)

* Puerto Rico: 21, 18 with parental consent.

* Rhode Island: 18, 16 for females with parental consent.

* South Carolina: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* South Dakota: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Tennessee: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Texas: 18, 14 with parental consent. Possibly younger with judicial consent or if person under 18 had previously married and divorced. Texas Family Code

* Utah: 18 generally for first marriage, 16 with parental consent, 14 with court approval or previous marriage.

* Vermont: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Virginia: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Washington: 18, 17 with parental consent.

* West Virginia: 18

* Wisconsin: 18, 16 with parental consent.

* Wyoming: 18, 16 with parental consent.

Note that a couple of the states no minimum age is parental consent is given. (See Mississippi).

More information here.

[SolarPowered]

Here are the modern statutes:

etc.

Oddly, I note that you list several states that appear to have some version of, "or younger if this person has been previously married." I'm not clear about how they are thinking that someone could be married and then divorced or widowed younger than they can get married in the first place.