[Politicalkiddo]

I know someone whose great-grandparents married when they were both 13. This was in the early 1900s.

[Tennessee Nana]

in this case she was 14 he was 42

[Tennessee Nana]

in this case she was 14 he was 42

[9YearLurker]

What part of Appalachia or the South were they from?

[chajin]

I know someone whose great-grandparents married when they were both 13. This was in the early 1900s.

One of my great-grandfathers married my great-grandmother when he was 42 and she was 16, in 1880.

GGM was the oldest living-at-home child of her parents, who both died the previous year of whatever went through the farming village that winter. The younger children were parceled out to local families for raising, but she was presumably considered old enough to be married. GGF had lost his second (or third, we're not sure) wife at about the same time, so it was almost certainly a marriage of convenience: he needed someone to take care of the house and raise his children (though one of them was 18 at the time), and she needed a home and someone to provide for her.

They stayed married 20 years until his death in 1901, and had a number of children, one of whom was my father's mother. None of which in any way provides any "cover" for Joseph Smith, of course.