You’re reaching into the 1800s for examples, during which time many people besides Mormons were marrying very young, but the reality is that modern mainstream Mormons do not practice underage marriage. I’m sure there are cases of 16 and 17-year old Mormon girls falling in love and begging their parents for permission to marry, but I think such marriages, while legal, are pretty uncommon based on what I have seen. Predominantly Mormon Utah, like most other states, allows marriage at 16 with parental consent, while Hawaii allows marriage at 15 with parental consent, and Mississippi actually allows females to marry as young 15 even without parental consent. If you think 15 is bad (and I would agree with you that it is too young), then you would probably be appalled to know that there are countries where legal marriages are actually occurring at even younger ages, like Venezuela and Columbia, where girls can marry as young as 14 with parental consent.
The latter part of what you're saying here is not a complete picture of what I was getting at: I was comparing what fLDS do now to what mainstream Mormons have commonly accepted at some point of their history. And, no, it wasn't as common to marry young in the 19th century as you've been led to believe.
In fact, your contention about 19th century America is largely a cultural myth. 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] [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:
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 found at http://www.siu.edu/offices/iii/Publications/curr/high.html 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.
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
So the "especially young" Mormon brides was more a Utah thing. (Gee, who was living there in the 19th century?)
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.)
The track record on Joseph Smith is fairly clear:
He bedded his adopted live-in servant girl, Fanny Alger, from 1831 on (even Lds apologist presenter conceded this year a few years ago)
Minus his wife's knowledge, he "married" numerous women in 1841-1842 (including a 17 yo, Sarah Ann Whitney). And followed that up by marrying 14 yo Helen Mar Kimball and 16 yo Flora Ann Woodworth.
Per http://www.wisegeek.com/how-has-the-average-age-at-marriage-changed-over-time.htm: If one looks at US statistics over the past 100 years for example, one sees that men had an average age at marriage of 25.9 years in 1900. Women in 1900 had an average age at marriage of 22 years. For some this shatters an illusion that women 100 years ago were sold into marriage as young children. Even Jane Austen, writing in the early 19th century had heroines married at the earliest age of 17 or 18. In Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books, which are semi-autobiographical, her father would not allow her to marry until she was 18. Thus it can be said that the average woman was past 21 when entering her first marriage, 100 years ago.
And then there's this (source: Was it normal to marry 14-year-old girls in Joseph Smith's time:
Many LDS Church leaders and historians suggest that sexual relations and the marriage of Joseph Smith and his youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball, fourteen at the time, was "approaching eligibility."
There is no documentation to support the idea that marriage at fourteen was "approaching eligibility." Actually, marriages even two years later, at the age of sixteen, occurred occasionally but infrequently in Helen Mar's culture. Thus, girls marrying at fourteen, even fifteen, were very much out of the ordinary. Sixteen 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 nineteen to twenty-three.
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?]
...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.
Yup; they are apostate these days.
Would JS or BY even recognize them?
They sure would the FUNDAMENTALists!
THEY are they ones who actually FOLLOW MORMON scripture!