Mormon Church Admits Smith Married 14 year old

[Clueless Morgan]

I guess I'm having trouble seeing the scandal here - 14 was well above the age of consent at the time.  Yeah, it offends modern sensibilities, but not contemporary.

No doubt getting married at 14 was common in the early 1800s. The issue is more of how it looks from our modern times. And the fact, the marriage to a 14 year was just one of many.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2536601450.html

By 1860 most Americans were in their early to mid twenties when they married, with the average age somewhat lower in the South.

Later than Smith's generation, but still.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002115/

Community-based studies suggest an average age at marriage of about 20 years for women in the early colonial period and about 26 for men. As population densities increased and land prices rose in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, American couples delayed marriage, and a higher proportion remained permanently unmarried.

Looking at the ages of the women in one family in New York when they got married, which covers roughly the same geographic area as Smith lived, and roughly a similar time period:
http://clermontstatehistoricsite.blogspo...ew-of.html

So all my evidence thus far points to Livingston girls of the 18th century getting married primarily in their late teens and early 20s with a few notable exceptions.

In England and Ireland in the 1830s, the average age of marriage for women was 24 1/2
https://books.google.com/books?id=vxo7AA...0s&f=false

So, no, it doesn't appear to be the case that women were routinely married off around the age of 14.