[LMB] Age at first marriage

[Ann Sharp]

> From: Jason 
> I'm really not so sure that frontier women married
> as early as seems to be believed. I checked my
> genealogy database for my 1790s western 
> Pennsylvania ancestors (as the closest match for
> the WGW) and found no marriage dates have
> survived unless I want to presume that they were
> married a year before their first child. 

Ann:

Genealogist's rule of thumb for Western Europe and
America:  If the young couple were going to
housekeeping on their own, the usual/average age at
first marriage was about twenty-four for the young
man, twenty for the girl.  These numbers are
reasonably well supported once we start seeing enough
record-keeping for Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary Person to
have both a baptismal date and a marriage date
recorded, late 16th-early 17th centuries.  

They also make sense logically, since the young man
would probably be apprenticed until he turned
twenty-one (even if not apprenticed, his earnings
probably went to his parents until then).  Once his
apprenticeship was completed, it would have taken him
a few years to establish himself so as to be able to
offer a home to a bride.  The girl was deemed to come
of age at eighteen, and after that would take a couple
of years to assemble a proper trousseau – by which I
mean doing the spinning and weaving for a minimum
number of sheets, blankets, towels, quilts, etc. –
before you get to clothes at all.  

In my experience with old records, if the bride was
NOT pregnant at the time of the marriage, the first
baby's arrival was apt to be about eighteen months 
later.  After that, two-year intervals – a slightly
shorter time the first decade, stretching to a
three-year interval towards the tail end.  If there's
a four-year interval, look for a child that didn't
survive.

L.P.H.,

Ann