100-some years ago, it wasn’t unusual for a 19-year-old man to put his 17-year-old wife into a covered wagon and go set up a homestead and start raising a family.
“100-some years ago, it wasn’t unusual for a 19-year-old man to put his 17-year-old wife into a covered wagon and go set up a homestead and start raising a family.”
My ancestors from Spain were in their mid-teens when they packed up and came to a new place to be away from royal domination-alone-sometime around 1600...
And before then-at least in the Middle Ages-it was common for men who were good strategists and warriors to lead armies in their late teens, if they were really sharp.
As for young women, there are a number of old family archives from Britain of correspondence between soldiers and their wives-him telling her he will be home as soon as may be, and her outlining her take from selling trade goods, and her expenditures for management of their estate-everything from food to livestock-in detail. Fascinated, I read a bunch of them when I was in college-the youngest of those women managing a sizeable estate and/or business was 15...