People got married much younger back then. 15 or 16 wasn’t uncommon.
People also usually just married one person at a time. Not 27 - 50!!!!!
Getting married at 14 was common back then. A man getting married to 35+ women who are 14 years of age, at the same time was not common back then.
Census data shows the following:
Between 1800 and 1900, women generally married for the first time between the ages of 20 and 22. Less is known about the average age of first marriages for men during the 19th century. In 1890, when the U.S. Census Bureau started collecting marriage data, it was recorded that the average age of a first marriage for men was 26 years, and the average age of marriage for women was 22 years.
http://classroom.synonym.com/age-marriage-us-1800s-23174.html
Even if 14 was “legal”, it certainly wasn’t normal. If anything it was considered “cradle robbing”, especially for a man almost thrice her age.
And are we forgetting that little word “POLYGAMY” and the fact the LDS is magically saying “but they didn’t have sex together”? Like that’s going to soften the blow any.
Long Term Marriage Patterns in the United States from Colonial Times to the Present, Michael R. Haines, The National Bureau of Economic Research, 1996.
By 1816, the Singulate Mean Age at First Marriage in the US was 25.5 years for females, according to the NBER.
However, in 1840, 40% of all marriages (not necessarily SMAFM) were to teenagers. Fewer than 1% of marriages were to 14-year-olds and the likelihood of a 14-year-old bride went down as the husband's age went up. These statistic had nothing to do with being a member of the Latter-Day Saints movement.
A 37-year-old husband with a 14-year-old bride? Not at all common. Uncommon. Perhaps one out of 200 37-year-old men. Fourteen-year-old bride, 37-year-old groom, no formal marriage, polygamy, marriage kept secret, promise of eternal salvation to her entire family if marriage occurs . . . what is the word for "so uncommon as not to be adequately described by the word 'uncommon?'"
Other resources include Gapminder (Interactive Singulate Mean Age at First Marriage by Country and Year), FairMormon Blog: 19th Century Nuptiality and Propaganda II, and Helen Mar Kimball, Wife of Joseph Smith.
Marriages between 37-year-old men and 14-year-old women occurred and being a LDS had nothing to do with it. However, suggesting that an 1840's marriage between a 37-year-old man and a 14-year-old woman was anything but uncommonly uncommon is apologetics.