Two Videos on Teen Marriages

Video A

That Time a 26 Year Old Edgar Allan Poe Married His 13 Year Old Cousin
Today I Found Out | 24.X.2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoYWn8nRCEA

I

0:31 One can see they lived in a Protestant country, since they were first cousins.

Banned by the Decretum Gratiani and its successors up to this day.

II

"take her in and have her educated in an attempt to prevent the girl's marriage at such a young age"

Something tells me, Neilson Poe was more ambitious than strictly lawobserving.

If laws had been against a girl of 13 marrying, such an arrangement would not have been necessary to prevent her marriage.

Later on 1:22 "Though the marriage certificate listed her as 21"

Age when she could marry without parental consent?

In Catholic canon law (and thus many countries of Middle Ages, not all) that would have been at 12.

III

3:54 "commonly" and "the mean" are not synonymous.

"The mean age for marriage for women between 1821 and 1830 (Virginia was born in 1822) was 22.6 years"

• 1) This does not mean ALL married at 22.6 years, obviously.
• 2) Since it does not say "first marriage" it may include subsequent marriages, which are often considerably later.
• 3) Either way, it certainly includes later marriages.
• 4) 22.6 still being the mean therefore implies earlier marriages as well.

Your data have NOT argued how far below 22.6 years, nor how common or uncommon marriages at 13 were.

They could have been rather rare in circles like that of the Clemm family, without being so in the population overall.

IV

4:08 "only 12.6 % were married by the time they were 19"

Contrary to the descandancy of St. Louis up to 1500's (mostly stopped with those born before), where the percentage was 75 %.

[see below under other video]

Now, will we get to how long these 12.6 % had been married?

I don't think we will, considering the statistics I found, since data prior to 1870 are usually not from scrutinising public records.

Below cites two stats:

Mountain and Pacific Census Regions

(1860 - 1850–1870 estimates based on imputed relationships)

1.8 - 32.4 men / women married between 15 and 19.

Now, the Poes and Clemms were not from there.

Virginia was born in Baltimore, Maryland.

I suppose that would have been New England Census region? No, Mid-Atlantic.

Corresponding numbers in Mid-Atlantic by 1860:

1.1 - 8.7

So, men married at between 15 and 19, consistently a low percentage, because men are bread winners.

Women .... definitely more often than men, and nearly four times as often in Mountain and Pacific than in Mid-Atlantic.

The Effect of the Civil War on Southern Marriage Patterns
J. David Hacker, Libra Hilde, and James Holland Jones
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002115/

Source: 1850–1880 IPUMS samples with qualification in footnote 10:

10. Only white marriage patterns can be ascertained in the prewar period; the 1850 and 1860 censuses enumerated slaves in a separate, more limited population schedule, and because the slave schedule did not group or identify family members, it is impossible to infer marital status and estimate age at marriage. These samples are part of the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) created at the Minnesota Population Center (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus, Minneapolis). Ruggles Steven, et al. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3.0. Minneapolis: 2004. The samples are available for free public downloading at http://ipums.org. IPUMS samples have been used in diverse projects including studies of the onset of fertility control in the nineteenth century, long-term trends in interstate migration, long-term changes in American family structure, and the migration of Appalachian whites to the Midwest in the twentieth century. For example, see Hacker J. David. Rethinking the ‘Early’ Decline of Marital Fertility in the United States. Demography. 2003 November;40:605–20.; Hall Patricia Kelly, Ruggles Steven. ‘Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity’: New Evidence on the Internal Migration of Americans, 1850–2000. Journal of American History. 2004 December;91:829–46.; Ruggles Steven. The Transformation of American Family Structure. American Historical Review. 1994 February;99:103–28.; and Alexander J. Trent. Defining the Diaspora: Appalachians in the Great Migration. Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 2006 Autumn37:219–47.

Video B

When Did Teen Girls Stop Commonly Getting Married?
Today I Found Out | 6.X.2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSPsJ1LPw28

I

2:12 "that might not have been the norm"

Not sure what you mean by "the norm".

In most modern states outside UK and US, and since 2006 even in France, since recent revolutions, 18 has been minimum age.

This means that you could legally marry at 18.

Also, it is unlikely that marriage at 18 is now the "statistical norm" or better statistical medium.

But no one in his right mind would argue a girl marrying at 18 were abnormal.

Dito for marriage at 12 in the Middle Ages. It was not the statistical medium age, but it was as certainly not regarded as abnormal.

2:42 urban Yorkshire, mostly between 18 and 22, rural areas around late teens to early twenties.

Could this be due to the fact that affluence is conducive to marrying when it is legal and lack thereof, at least among people with certain ambitions, is conducive to delay?

Note, obviously urban Yorkshire was more affluent than rural Yorkshire, but at the same time, urban Yorkshire was also more ambitious.

II

Here is a little case study on Medieval North, very incomplete:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Medieval women married when?
https://filolohika.blogspot.com/2017/05/medieval-women-married-when.html

Here is a less incomplete one:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Age at first marriage : a rough estimate
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2018/05/age-at-first-marriage-rough-estimate.html

Citing my conclusion on 58 or 57 ladies : Median 16, lower quartile 15, upper quartile 19. A shorter count with just 57 also gave same result: Median 16, lower quartile 15, upper quartile 19.

Your mean for first marriage all colonies previous to 1700 is ... when three quarters of the ladies in the Medieval descendancy (or the parts I came around to studying, no choices made in favour of younger ages) of King St. Louis IX of France were already married, since that is what "upper quartile 19" means.

Now, "colonies" were partly peopled by ambitious and prudent peoples ... this means that ambitions and lack of means postponed marriages beyond the legal limit.

That is perhaps a way to get a statistic medium, but that is not the definition of a norm.

So, 1750 - 1799 and 1800 - 1849, France, Germany and England either got its people less affluent (one possible early consequence of industrial revolution) or more ambitious (one possible consequence of Enlightenment).

Can I give you a tip?

One reason why Muslims are doing better demographically is, they are not as ambitious as the indigenous population about what kind of affluence to have prior to marriage. This is not a critique of them, it's a thing we did better on and more like them earlier.