. . . but, to the precise point, was it illegal under the law of Smith's time period? It is close to creepy that Mormon Church water-carriers argue that marrying 14-year-old children was not illegal (which, by their desperate rationalizations, apparently would make such marriages acceptable and decreed in the lustful eyes of their polygamous Mormon God).
Below are arguments from both sides:
A. Mormon Church Claims That Marrying a 14-year-old Girl in Joseph Smith's Day Legally Fit Within the Frame of "Approaching Eligibility" but Such an Assertion Has Significant Historical Problems
"Many LDS Church leaders and historians suggest that sexual relations and the marriage of Joseph Smith and his youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball, 14 at the time, was "approaching eligibility."
"There is no documentation to support the idea that marriage at 14 was 'approaching eligibility." Actually, marriages even two years later, at the age of 16, occurred occasionally but infrequently in Helen Mar's culture. Thus, girls marrying at 14 , even 15, were very much out of the ordinary. 16 was comparatively rare, but not unheard of. American women began to marry in their late teens; around different parts of the United States the average age of marriage varied from 19 to 23.
"In the United States the average age of menarche (first menstruation) dropped from 16.5 in 1840 to 12.9 in 1950. More recent figures indicate that it now occurs on average at 12.8 years of age. The mean age of first marriages in colonial America was between 19.8 years to 23.7, Most women were married during the age period of peak fecundity (fertility).
"Mean pubertal age has declined by some 3.7 years from the 1840’s.
"The psychological sexual maturity of Helen Mar Kimball in today’s average age of menarche (first menstruation) would put her psychological age of sexual maturity at the time of the marriage of Joseph Smith at 9.1 years old. (16.5 years-12.8 years =3.7 years) (12.8 years-3.7 years=9.1 years)
"The fact is Helen Mar Kimball's sexual development was still far from complete. Her psychological sexual maturity was not competent for procreation. The coming of puberty is regarded as the termination of childhood; in fact the term child is usually defined as the human being from the time of birth to the on-coming of puberty. Puberty the point of time at which the sexual development is completed. In young women, from the date of the first menstruation to the time at which she has become fitted for marriage, the average lapse of time is assumed by researchers to be two years.
"Age of eligibility for women in Joseph Smith’s time-frame would start at a minimum of 19 ½ years old.
"This would suggest that Joseph Smith had sexual relations and married several women before the age of eligibility, and some very close to the age of eligibility including:
"Fanny Alger 16
"Sarah Ann Whitney 17
"Lucy Walker 17
"Flora Ann Woodworth 16
"Emily Dow Partridge 19
"Sarah Lawrence 17
"Maria Lawrence 19
"Helen Mar Kimball 14
"Melissa Lott 19
"Nancy M. Winchester [14?]
"And then we have these testimonies:
"Joseph was very free in his talk about his women. He told me one day of a certain girl and remarked, that she had given him more pleasure than any girl he had ever enjoyed. I told him it was horrible to talk like this.' (Joseph Smith's close confidant and LDS Church First Councilor, William Law, Interview in 'Salt Lake Tribune,' July 31, 1887)
"When Heber C. Kimball asked Sister Eliza R. Snow the question if she was not a virgin although married to Joseph Smith, she replied, 'I thought you knew Joseph Smith better than that.' (Stake President Angus M. Cannon, statement of interview with Joseph III, 23, LDS archives)
"Short Bios of Smith's wives:
http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org"Did Smith have sex with his wives?:
http://www.i4m.com/think/history/joseph_smith_sex.htm"Whatever the average age of menarche might have been in the mid 19th-century, the average age of marriage was around 20 for women and 22 for men. And a gap of 15 to 20 years or more between partners was very unusual, not typical. Whatever biology might have to say, according to the morals of his time, several of Joseph Smith's wives were still inappropriately young for him.
"It is a pure myth that 19th-century American girls married at age 12-14.
"For example, Laura Ingalls Wilder, from 'Little House on the Prairie' fame, was born in 1867, which puts her later than Joseph Smith but still in the 1800s. She tells of hearing of the marriage of a 13-year-old girl, and being shocked. She also notes that the girl's mother 'takes in laundry,' and is sloppy and unkempt--implying that 'nice' people don't marry off their teenaged daughters. Laura, herself, became engaged at 17--but her parents asked her to wait until she was 18 to marry.
"You merely need to go to your local courthouse and ask to see the old 19th century marriage books. Take a look at and pay attention to the age at marriage. Sure a very few did, but it was far from the norm. The vast majority of women married after the age of 20.
"In fact, look up the marriage ages in the Smith family before polygamy. You'll find that one of the Smith girls was 19. The rest of them, and their sisters-in-law, were in their early 20s when they married. The Smith boys' first wives were in their 20s. The same pattern was true for the various branches of my family and the rest of American society at the time.
"On the extremely rare occasions women younger than 17 married, it was to men close to their same age, not 15 to 20 years older.
"The case is even true in pioneer Utah among first marriages. Mormon men in their twenties started out marrying someone their own age. Then later these older men married girls under twenty to be their plural wives. But the first wives were the age of the husband and married over the age of twenty. This is still the case is the rural Utah polygamist communities.
"References:
"Coale and Zelnik assume a mean age of marriage for white women of 20 (1963: 37). . . .
[The next source listed is deleted here because an unknown "banned word" problem prevents this post from otherwise being allowed up on the RfM discussion board; click on the article's link to retrieve that source.]
"The Massachusetts family reconstitutions revealed somewhat higher mean ages. For Hingham, Smith reports an age at first marriage of 23.7 at the end of the 18th century (1972: Table 3, p. 177).
"For Sturbridge, the age for a comparable group was 22.46 years (Osterud and Fulton 1976: Table 2, p. 484), in Franklin County it was 23.3 years (Temkin-Greener, H., and A.C. Swedlund. 1978. 'Fertility Transition in the Connecticut Valley:1740-1850.' in 'Population Studies' 32 (March 1978):27-41.: Table 6, p. 34).
"Jack Larkin, 'The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790-1840' (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 63; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, 'Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750' (NY: Oxford University Press, 1980), 6; Nancy F. Cott, 'Young Women in the Second Great Awakening in New England,' in 'Feminist Studies' 3 (1975): 16. Larkin writes,
"Dr. Dorothy V. Whipple, 'Dynamics of Development: Euthenic Pediatrics' (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966)
http://www.i4m.com/think/polygamy/teen_polygamy.htm_____
B. The Mormon Church Claims That Smith's Marriage to 14-year-o;d Helen Mar Kimball was Legal
"An LDS Church essay on the question, claims that Smith's marriage to Helan Mar Kimball was, in fact, legal in its day:
"One essay acknowledges LDS Church founder Joseph Smith practiced polygamy, and married a girl who was just shy of her 15th birthday.
“'Most of those sealed to Joseph Smith were between 20 and 40 years of age at the time of their sealing to him. The oldest, Fanny Young, was 56 years old. The youngest was Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of Joseph’s close friends Heber C. and Vilate Murray Kimball, who was sealed to Joseph several months before her 15th birthday,” the essay, published on the LDS Church’s website, said. “Marriage at such an age, inappropriate by today’s standards, was legal in that era, and some women married in their mid-teens.”
http://fox13now.com/2014/10/22/lds-church-issues-new-essays-on-polygamy-acknowledges-joseph-smith-married-teen-girl/_____
C. Other Mormon Apologist Sites Say That Marriages in Smith's Day to 14-Year-Old Child Brides Were Not "Scandalous" (Although They Were "Eyebrow Raising" and "Rare)," But, Nonetheless, Still "Legal"
"Joseph Smith was sealed to several women who were under the age 19th century than it is today, concerns have been expressed by modern-day observers.
"The Prophet was sealed to ten women under that age of 20. Four were 19, three were 17, one was 16, and two were 14.
"Helen Mar Kimball 14
"Nancy M. Winchester 14?
"Flora Ann Woodworth 16
"Sarah Ann Whitney 17
"Sarah Lawrence 17
"Lucy Walker 17
"Fanny Alger 19
"Emily Dow Partridge 19
"Maria Lawrence 19
"Malissa Lott 19
"Marriages for young women 16 and older were not uncommon in the mid-19th century. Matrimonies for females who were 14 years of age were eyebrow-raising, but not scandalous in the 1840s.
"Sexual relations are documented in several of the plural marriages between Joseph and the older seven plural wives, but there is no documentation supporting that either of the plural sealings to the two 14-year-old wives was consummated. In contrast, several observations support they were not.
"A review of marital patterns in the United States during the nineteenth century shows that the average female age for first marriages was around 20"
"Polygamy researcher Kimball Young wrote: “By present standards [1954] a bride of 17 or 18 years is considered rather unusual but under pioneer conditions there was nothing atypical about this.”
"LDS scholar Gregory L. Smith explained:
"It is significant that none of Joseph’s contemporaries complained about the age differences between polygamous or monogamous marriage partners. This was simply part of their environment and culture; it is unfair to judge 19th century members by 21st century social standards. . . .
"Joseph Smith’s polygamous marriages to young women may seem difficult to understand or explain today, but in his own time such age differences were not typically an obstacle to marriage. The plural marriages were unusual, to say the least; the younger ages of the brides were much less so. Critics do not provide this perspective because they wish to shock the audience and have them judge Joseph by the standards of the modern era, rather than his own time.
"How Common were Marriages to 14-year-old Brides in the 1880s?
"Attorney Melina McTigue observed that concerning the civil statutes governing the age of consent for sexual relations during the 1800s: 'Early English law set the age of consent at 10, the age was gradually raised over the years. In the 19th century, most states had set the age of consent at 10. A few states began by using 12 as the cutoff; Delaware set the age of consent at 7.'
"The minimum age for consent in Illinois at that time was ten.
"Regardless, the age of consent may have little or no correspondence to the average age of a first marriage. In Joseph Smith’s day, marriages to 14-year-old girls were legal but rare.
"In 1842, the Nauvoo City Council passed an ordinance specifying the minimum age for marriage, which recited Illinois State law verbatim: 'All male persons over the age of seventeen years, and females over the age of fourteen years, may contract and be joined in marriage, provided, in all cases where either party is a minor, the consent of parents or guardians be first had.'"
http://josephsmithspolygamy.org/common-questions/14-year-old-wives-teenage-brides/Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 01/13/2017 06:14AM by steve benson.