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What about in the old days when people married at a much younger age?

Well, yes, it happened...but it's largely a cultural myth if you think that was prominent.

Posters Ansel12 & Sky Pilot were already addressing this on FReeper polygamist threads in Spring 2008.

Ansel12's posted links showed that in the UK, the average age for a woman marrying between 1851 and 1890 was just under age 26 for “all brides” (including women becoming remarried...and was over age 24 for single women...the average age for a single woman to be married in the UK/Wales in the last half of the nineteenth century was never younger than 24.3 years [1871-1875])
[Note: Ya gotta remember that a lot of Utah brides in the 1860s & beyond were UK converts coming to Utah] …
The data came from this source: UK/Wales average age of “all brides”

That was the UK...what about the United States in the latter half of the 19th century?
In New England, the average marriage age in MA 1850-1860 was age 23.6. In Vermont in 1858 it was 21.4.

Two other table charts I came across included one where the average age for 1750-1890 at about age 22 -- only dipping down below that for one decade --1870-1879 (21.7 yrs).

Another table showed the average age for women marrying in 1650 was 20; 1750, 23; 1850, 24; 1950, 20. So your cultural myth is quite off-base: Women were much more likely to get married earlier in 1650 and 1950 (average age 20) than 1850—average age 24.

FACTS SEEM TO INDICATE 'TWAS MORE PARTICULARLY 'MORMON' TO MARRY VERY YOUNG THAN THE BROADER US 19TH CENTURY CULTURE

Warren Jeffs' culpable actions can be laid at the doorstep of the mainstream Mormons:

* A BYU professor, Kathryn M. Daynes, researched marriages in Manti, Utah area in the 19th century. She concluded that ”Women throughout the period married young, younger than outside Utah.” BYU Source: More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910

* Even the LDS prophet who passed the manifesto which began an exit strategy for LDS' war on monogamy in 1890 wrote in his journal: ”I shall not seal the people as I have done. Old Father Alread brought three young girls 12 & 13 years old. I would not seal them to him. They would not be equally yoked together...Many get their endowments who are not worthy and this is the way that devils are made.” (Source: Wilford Woodruff, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 5:58.)

* Brigham Young's #19 wife, Ann Eliza Young, divorced him and wrote Wife Number 19 in 1875. In chapter 18, she recounts how an Lds 19th century bishop from Springville, Utah lined up all of his young nieces to marry.

Richard Abanes, citing that 1875 Ann Eliza Young book published by Dustin, Gilman, and Co., wrote: "Bishop Aaron Johnson of Springville, Utah...claimed six of his own nieces as wives--the eldest being only 15 years old when he wed her. The younger nieces ranged downward in age to 2 years old. Johnson asked that they be given to him as they matured, which is exactly what happened. He was finally sealed to the littlest girl when she reached about 13." (Abanes, Inside Today's Mormonism, p. 231, Harvest House, 2004)