Some veterans of the American Civil War later in life would marry a young girl. Some of the brides were in their late teens, some younger. The point of many of the marriages was not to provide the veteran with a wife but to provide for the young girl and her family. When the war veteran died his young wife would inherit his pension.
That's true. It happened quite often, at least in the South, between 1900 and 1930, after the southern states created pensions for veterans and, upon their deaths, their spouses. When a young woman didn't have what seemed to be good prospects for marriage or self-support, she would marry an elderly veteran, most of whom were by then in their 70s or 80s. These widows kept receiving the pension until their own deaths, some of which were in the 1980s and 1990s (and I think a few even later).
@@lisasharf1442 Thanks, Lisa. I'll follow up on that information. We're working on a story about December-May marriages (I think that's the old term) for the magazine, and the Confederate pension arrangements will be included.
In the mid 1950’s when my dad was in the USAF we lived in Marianna, FL. My parents hired a local man to contract the construction of a new home. At the time he was in his mid 50’s and his mother had recently passed away. He told my parents that his father, when in his mid 20’s, was a surgeon in the Army of Northern Virginia. Many years later as an adult I found the gentleman again when I took my young family to tour the where area I’d grown up and I asked him if that were true or did they misunderstand and it was his grandfather. He confirmed it was his father, that his mother was a teenager when they married and his father was in his late 60’s.
In the 1990s, I knew a lawyer in Cartersville, Georgia, whose grandfather was born in 1811 and served in the Confederate Congress. And, within the past ten years, a very fine gentleman in our community died. His grandfather was a Confederate soldier and one of his great-grandfathers was killed in action at South Mountain, Maryland, in 1862. That kind of generational depth is always fascinating and a bit amazing. Thank you for posting.
I did some digging and found that Hattie’s husband, Jim J Starnes, went on to marry a lady named Bertha. In the 1910 census, the young couple were living with Jim’s parents (James and Jennie Starnes) at 583 Marietta Street, Atlanta, Fulton County, GA. This shows this is Jim’s second marriage, his age was 23 and Bertha was 19. They did not have any children yet. Jim would have been about 21 when he married Hattie. The gravestone next to Hattie’s in your video is that of Jim’s mother, Jennie, who later died in 1924. I was hoping to find more info about Hattie’s family but couldn’t. I wonder if her parents also died of typhoid and that’s why she married so young.. maybe there was no other family around?
Jim was 18 or 19 when he married Hattie. Hattie's maiden name was Stephens. Her family came from Cherokee County, Georgia. I think some of her folks were textile mill workers and/or tenant farmers, so not well-to-do. If I remember correctly, her parents did not die of typhoid and lived many years after she died. Thank you for searching and posting what you found!
Oh my gosh! I can't imagine. When I was twelve, I still wore size 6 girl's clothes. I didn't even know the full mechanics of what happened during sex until learning about it in 10th grade biology class. As a child, seeing a grown man naked would be traumatizing, so having to submit to sex with him would be unimaginably gross. 🤢
My aunt married and had her first baby at the age of 13. Her and her husband stayed married to each other all their lives. It was a happy marriage and they prospered together. This was in the early 1950's. Strange things happen in this world and they are not always bad.
My Great Grandma who raised me with my Great Grandpa age 21 got married at 12. Her Mama died and her Daddy was sending all the kids someplace else to live. She adored my G Grandpa. So she asked her dad if she could marry him instead. He agreed. My Grandpa married her on a bear skinned rug. G. Grandpa was a hunter. A barber by trade. He moved to Los Angeles where eventually was born. GranGran Go said and bought a tent and became an ordained minister. She had one girl my Nana. My G Grandpa was so wonderful and GranGran was strict. He died when I was nine. It broke my heart. Things sure have changed.
My Grandmother was only 12 when she wed and had her first baby when she was 13. She went on to raise 9 children 2 daughters and 7 sons, my father being the youngest. My grandparents both passed in 1960, I was just an infant.
My best friend at 19 married a 15 year old girl.I think BOTH of them were virgins when they met.They are the ONLY couple I know still married.Married since 1976. 48 years and counting.God blessed both of them.
My friend is 89 and her son is 75. She was from Georgia and was wed at 13 and she had the baby the following year. She said that was not unusual. The father was 22. In many places that would be illegal.
@@mchapman1928 Thanks for the information, though I don't think it's up to date. I think all states now have unrestricted marriage ages of 17, 18 or 19. But some have younger ages with certain permissions, parental or sometimes judicial, and some have exceptions if the female is pregnant. So, it's pretty complicated and nuanced.
@@georgiabackroads8906 - Possibly. The INTERNET has been known to be wrong. lol. I’m aware of the pregnancy situations, I’m came across that as a judge. I can understand Alaska having a young age because of the indigenous people there, customs. Personally, I feel 16 should be the youngest age allowed. Then again, some people mature early, and some never mature.
@@mchapman1928 California age of consent is 18, the ONLy exception would be if a judge allowed it, and given how severe Califfornia law is, that is unlikely. SO basically the age for marriage in California is 18. Source: I was a foster parent of a teenager, I had to know the relevant laws.
@@mildredherring1904 - True. If you read my other posts, the legal age to marry is under 18 in most states, Alaska is 15. I had a trial where a 14 year old white girl, accused a 33 year old black man of having consensual sex with her numerous times. She gave very specific times and dates. This was in the South about 25 years ago. An all white jury heard the case. He was found not guilty, because it was proved she lied and made up the entire accusation. She accused the man because she was dating his younger brother and she wanted to make him jealous. It was proven the man was in the hospital having major back surgery and was in recovery on the dates he was supposed to be climbing up a ladder into her bedroom. Not all accusations are truthful.
My mom was born in a small mountain town in Virginia. She married her first husband when she was 16. This was in the 50’s. She just wanted to escape the small town and find a better life for herself. Her marriage only lasted a few years and then she made it on her own for a few years until she met my dad. Her life wasn’t always easy but at least she did what she thought best for herself. I’m glad she did or I wouldn’t be here.
Very similar to my mother’s experience. Although she stayed married for a longer time. She just needed an escape from the crippling poverty of that Virginia mountain town.
My Mum was 16, my Dad 23 when they married. They had 6 children, 14 grandchildren, and 21 greatgrandchildren. My Dad passed August 2024 aged 88. My Mum in aged care with dementia. My Mum would always say to me when I became a Mum that as a Mum you go to bed at night and have a good cry, then get up in the morning and do it all over again. Must have been so hard for her, but it was not obvious to us.
My grandmother was 14 when she was married and had her first child. She passed a few months shy of her 101st birthday, and was survived by all of the children she had birthed. Rural South Carolina, would have been the 1920s.
My great grandmother got married at 15 in 1917. Had her first child, my great aunt, in 1918. Died in 1932 at age 29 from cancer, leaving behind a husband and four children.
@@user-bg2oi4bz3p I think you mean that the "average life expectancy" was in the early 40s back then. But your point is well taken. The average life expectancy of females in the USA today is in the 70s, I believe.
My great grandmothers eldest sister was born 1899 and married 1912. Her first husband shipped off to Europe and didn't come back, leaving her with with an infant at the age of 14. She married again at 17 and had nine children. Her four eldest signed up for the army in 1938 and again, didn't come back. I never got to meet her as she passed in 1995 but one of her sisters is still around and swears it was very very common back then. Her first husband was, however, 17 to her 13 which although definitely not okay today is a far cry from being the same age as her own father. This was in NZ but I find it interesting how this was once fairly standard.
My Dad Married 3 times! My Mom was 17yrs old & the other 2 girls before my Mother was 11 & 12yrs old! 2 son's by one of his wives & 2 girl's by the other😮 Back in those days; marriage at any age was just one less mouth to feed!
Thinking you young lady and your life you are not forgotten. I told my daughter about you. Your life must not have been easy to get married at twelve years old. I hope you rest in piece easier than you did on earth you deserve to be in heaven after such a tough life on earth. Thinking of you Rip.
I got married at 20 but a lot of people in my family got married at 17 or later, my mom was married at 15 and had me at 16 in 1974. My son is still single at 26 and I think that’s good, gives him time to experience things before settling down. 😊
My wife and I had our wedding when she was 19 and I was 21, still very much in love all these years later. People always comment that we were so young to have married, but all we wanted in life was to be together, that being said, I cant imagine being married at 12. Differnt times and cultures.....thank you for this glimpse.
It was a different time and culture, yippee. Marriages in the young teenage years were fairly common and accepted. In today's time they are illegal except in very rare circumstances that require pretty strict scrutiny. In no state in the US today can 15 year olds choose to marry one another, let alone a 12 year old. And there are lots of other restrictions imposed by the various states.
I recently looked at the 1930 census and found that my paternal great-grandmother was living with my paternal grandparents at that time. I had to double check a few things because my grandfather was shown to be 27, and his mother was 38. It turns out the census was correct. In 1902 Alabama, my 11 year old great-grandmother was married and having a child.
People married for a lot of reasons back then. He might have needed help if he was left with young children. She may have had no other family left. The speculation leads to heartbreak. Rest in peace.
Grandma married when she was 13. She was an orphan living with an aunt and uncle and their large family. Many young girls in this situation married not only for love but also convenience. At that time having a husband meant having security. In Grandma's case, she loved him very much.
Thanks for sharing a story from your own background. There were so many such "young" marriages in the early 1900s and before, some perfectly fine and some not fine for one reason or another. Your Grandma had a good story. :)
I know someone personally who married at 14 in the 1960s. They are still together and the most loving couple! I know that is an unusual case. My grandmother was basically in an arranged marriage in the late 1800s at the age of 16 and she was treated badly according to my Mom. She and two or three siblings traveled from one state to another to marry siblings of another family.
@@georgiabackroads8906 The young couple I mentioned are in their 70s now and yesterday he picked her a bouquet of wildflowers. My grandpa was abusive to grandma and their 9 children.
In medieval Europe people didn’t marry very young, only the wealthy and powerful did to secure property and form alliances. And even then the marriage wasn’t always consummated until the couple was a bit older.
@@kellydalstok8900 Marie Antoinette was not married even by proxy until she reached puberty at nearly 15. Then a proxy wedding was allowed while she was still in Austria and then later she went to France. Church law allowed marriage at 12 for girls, 14 for boys because those were the earliest ages at which people would reach puberty. But the Church law recommended the couple be at least two years older than the minimal age. In fact, most were considerably older, usually early 20s for women. Certain areas of the United States were known for very early marriages going way back.
In Georga then it could have been the poverty,working young or other things. It's always been as tough State. Lots of rich folks and folks with nothing. A great Georgian Jimmy Carter would know of these things before and while he was Govenor and perhaps President. Bless all those who's life's were cut short by the curse of poverty in Georia and elsewhere.🇺🇲🙏😢
I've been a Georgia resident for nearly 30 years now ... But I was born and raised in Virginia. My great grandmother was also born in 1895 and married at the age of 14 - her groom was 21. This was not at all unusual in the foothills of the Blue Ridge ... She lived to be 87.
May Hattie be in Eternal Peace. Sad story. Btw, some young ones are married kind of like an adoption. Also some are marked to inherit the pension of the older husband . Some are married because they have no family and marriage gives them a home with food and shelter. It’s not always about indecency!!
My dad's grandparents were unique. My great grandma was 26 and her husband was 16. She owned a farm in Northern Michigan. Once her husband hit 21 she got a divorce (story is he tried to take her land) and married a Hungarian immigrant instead. That man adopted the 3 oldest girls to give them a better chance in life since their parents were ojibwe and natives weren't considered American citizens back then. My mother's parents got married at 15 and 18. My grandma's mom was in an asylum and dad had abandoned them and my grandpa was an orphan.
Girls married for different reasons: pregnancy, no guardians (parents died), illness on a deathbed, etc. it’s very common for a 12 yr old to die in childbirth, ectopic pregnancy, toxemia, etc. Having a baby at 12 increases the chance of death exponentially.
In the third world, teen mothers have a higher mortality rate. I said in another comment it's sort of puzzling that even girls of 18 to 19 would have a higher mortality rate but apparently there is a some final growth that takes place after the teens that just makes the body more capable. And yet girls can get pregnant so young. It's a strange fluke of nature.
The life expectancy of you were poor back then was only 45 for men and 47 for most women. The middle and upper classes lived longer due to decreased heavy labor (desk jobs) and better health and nutrition. Many women died in childbirth back then as babies were delivered at home and by a midwife. As a consequence marriage and children came ata much younger age. 13 years old was about average in many states then. Not all girls played with or could afford dolls then either, instead they were taught to run a home (cook clean mend clothes) from a very early age, starting at age three the girls were given tasks and even worked in the fields. As a consequence girls were often ready to be a wife by age thirteen and had an equivalent maturity to someone today of about twenty or more years old. There was really no childhood to speak of in this life, poor families and share croppers did this out of necessity. Both my grandmothers told me this was the way then.
@@charlottekey8856until a female is 20, she is still adding calcium to her bones. In addition to a regular prenatal vitamin, Doctors have females under 20 take additional calcium. If a pregnant woman does not have enough calcium, the body takes it from bones and teeth. There can be lifelong consequences from that especially if she has several back to back.
@@tenabarnes3269 it wasn’t just the poor. The rate of death due to whooping cough, pneumonia, chickenpox, measles, etc for children 0-5 was 50%. There were no treatments for cancer, many pregnancy issues, heart disease, polio, tuberculosis, cholera, etc. These affected the poor at a higher rate but frequently killed the wealthy. My grandmothers tell 2 sides of the story, one wealthy and one extremely poor from birth (both white). On the poor side my great grandparents immigrated from Germany in the 1890s. My grandmother was born shortly after in 1898. She went to thru 2nd grade and required to quit to start work as a washerwoman’s assistant. She was 7yrs old. She married at 13/14, and quickly produced 3 children. Her husband died in his late 20s of illness. She never stopped working. She remarried by arrangement in 1933 in her early 30s to a farmer in his early 60s. The agreement was to allow her parents and children to live with them. She worked in the home, cared for their children, maintained a large garden for canning and worked the fields at certain times of the year. She had 7 live children and lived to be 76, she died of stomach cancer. My other grandmother lived to 87, she would have died 15 yrs earlier but she had to have xrays of her lungs for volunteer work and they found cancer in one lobe of her lungs. It was removed and she lived another 15 years.
My niece was married at 15-1/2 to a 25 year old. I was do mad at my sister at the time for allowing it. My niece divorced in her early 30,'s after 3 children. She gave birth at 16 or 17. Sad really.
Throughout time it was common for teens to marry. People grew up sooner and shouldered adult responsibilities at a much younger age. Therefore, it was more common for a 13-year-old or 16-year-old to marry. In their cultures, in their times, it was more common for them to be ready than we'd be today.
They are still marrying at this same tender age in the US 😊(secretly and illegally)and in tons of other countries openly. Females are still treated like property to be sold, bartered, beaten and battered. Humans are savage to each other. Accountability will happen.
Sadly, many girls were married off as soon as they started menstruation. Parents had a hard time feeding the family and they didn’t want girls getting pregnant and staying unwed. They pushed them into marriage when they "became a woman." That age is often 11, 12, or 13.
Thank you for viewing and sharing your thoughts. While hunger can be an issue anywhere and anytime, for many rural families that wasn't the case. Alot of rural Americans said that they didn't even realize there was a Great Depression because they were already poor but also because they lived on farms and raised their own food. Boys and girls were helpful in farm chores. And while some girls would have been "pushed" into marriage, most probably did so voluntarily. The culture felt they were ready. They felt they were ready.
My husband's Uncle married at 18 to a 13 year old bride.They had a wonderful family and were married over 50 years. They were a loving couple and had many friends.
Thank you for adding that information, lakesidesusan. That's the kind of relationship that came to mind when I found Hattie's grave in February, knowing that these things happened fairly often.
that is absolutely very sad. I don't know. I never could understand how a pastor could look at a child bride and a clearly grown man and be okay with doing this. I know times were different but It is disgusting to take a child and concerning when their parents or relatives just want to get a child out of their house so they don't have to feed them. This world depresses me.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. In certain circumstances in that era, these were adults or near-adults who made the decision mutually and voluntary. Not all of them, by any means, but some of them. So their families and communities celebrated those unions with no idea that 100 or 150 years later, a modern society with its own serious ills would look down on them with suspicion and contempt.
My daughter died when she was 12. I cannot imagine her being married at that age she was still such a baby. In the hospital toward the end of her life I was shocked that she'd become old enough they had to perform a pregnancy test before surgery. I'm like she's 12! Poor Hattie.
Not so unusual.I have an aunt that was married at 13 in 1960 in rural Mississippi.My grandmother and mother both said that she[the aunt] went from playing with doll babies to having real babies.My uncle [whom she married]was 18. I am going to guess it was a shotgun wedding.She left my uncle after about 15 years and 4 children wanting more out of life than he could give her.She married a man from Kilmichael Mississippi and the two moved to the big city of Memphis and She produced two more children.
Remember folks that things were different over 100 years ago. In the BACKWOODS, life was harder and childhood was over by 8 years old. Children were expected to go out and work at extremely young ages in very menial and poorly paid jobs. Boys like my own father were working a grown man's job on the railroads at age 14 in order to bring home money to feed all the over mouths in the house while his father worked an unproductive dirt farm with frequently poor harvests. Often parents expected girls to marry as soon as possible so there would be one less mouth to feed at home. Also girls matured at an earlier age back then so it was not unusual for them to prefer getting married and setting up their own household rather than staying home and sharing a bed with younger bed wetting siblings. So yes, at age 12 a girl would be easily persuaded to leave home and get married which was preferable to picking cotton or working in sweat mills all day. Twelve then was more like eighteen today.
Children did grow up early but that wasn't necessarily oppressive or wrong. More than half of American families lived on farms where everyone worked together and everyone chipped in. Some families were broken or unloving but many were just fine. In contrast, in today's time we've created (or tolerate) a culture in which children "grow up" much sooner than in earlier days. That would be in terms of innocence. In too many ways children today are exposed to things that take from them their childhoods. So, as is often the case, it can be challenging for one generation to criticize the flaws of another. We're all pretty flawed in varying ways.
In 17th century New France (what became Quebec in Canada) there was a law mandating that all females be married by age 14 and all males be married by age 16.
Wow! Unreal. I've heard in some areas you were considered an old maid if not married at age 14. 😮 The term old maid is ridiculous 🙄 Bless her heart ❤️ Having an entire life by age 12. 🙏
Marlene, thank you for your note. By the way, your "Bless her heart" is a nice sentiment used appropriately. From many posts I've seen on the internet, some people seem to think that "Bless his heart" or "Bless her heart" is a criticism, as it would be in a sentence like "Bless her heart, she didn't know any better." But just as often the meaning is just as you conveyed, "Poor thing!"
Very interesting. I suspect the 12 yo age at marriage was not that uncommon at the time. What was unusual was any of it was documented. Shocks lots of folks now but back when infant mortality was ginormous and life expectancy maybe half or less of that now? Anything was possible . . .
I found the obituary for my grandmother who passed at 29. My mom was born out of wedlock and was only 8. But my grandmother had gotten married to a much younger man and had two babies with him who were 3 and 16 months when she passed. Anyway, her obituary said she was 24 when she passed. I think it was to cover that she was way older than her husband. I think he had been only 17 when they wed. (Weird I know.) I think she was about 24 when they married. I found that odd and it could be confusing someday for someone doing ancestry. Her headstone does have the correct birthdate and death on them. While she wasn’t so young like this girl, I think the obit was changed for the same type of reason
Elaine, I'm not sure what you mean. If you mean young teen marriages only happened on the backroads, I don't think that's the case at all. It was common in cities too, though probably more common in rural areas where people were already working and pretty much considered adults by the teen years. In 1908, a larger percentage of Americans were rural than urban. American didn't become predominantly urban until 1920. Today, less than 20% of Americans live in rural areas.
That's really sad. Headstones can be wrong. My dad's was wrong and we asked them to do it again with the correct information. They did it again, but they did it exactly how they did before, with the wrong information. My mom thought about just leaving it wrong because fighting with the headstone company was getting to be too much for her.
You're right. My wife has an ancestor whose last name is spelled incorrectly on his headstone. Thank you for watching and taking a moment to share your thoughts. :)
From Australia - my reading and family history research seem to point to older men wedding younger women. The reasons for this are that an older man can provide for a wife and family and a young woman benefits from the protection inherent in marriage to a proven provider. Convicts, bounty immigrants and free settlers in this mix, many/most without support of family.
In ga, up until the 90 s a 14 yr old could married and in the 80 s a 12 yr old could be married... still today we can get married here that young but now have to have a parents signature
@@PutinsMommyNeverHuggedHimin our world, but the world then was very different. If you lived to your mid 40's, you were old, this you did many things at half the age we do now.
Thank you for this information. This is very interesting. Do you happen to know more of what happened to her young husband? I read a source that said he was 12 as well.
He was 18 or 19 when they married. He and his father were carpenters in Cedartown in northwest Georgia. I think they moved to Atlanta where Jim met Hattie Stephens. Her family was tenant farmers and textile mill workers from Cherokee County, who I also believe came to Atlanta. After Hattie died, Jim remarried and had children. He lived until about 1953.
I propose the question that I’ve long wondered regarding why the female body at such young ages is even ‘ready’ to be impregnated,carry, and deliver a baby anyway?? Yet its is very often so. NOT advocating for it at all but it’s always been perplexing to me upon learning of it. ( female adult here btw )
My paternal grandma was married at 19 and a mom as well by 19 in 1901. Grandpa was 26 at the time of the wedding. I was taking summer school one year. And met a gal who was married at 16. I wonder how she is doing these days. The summer school that year was held at Anoka Senior High.
Wow! I suppose life expectancy was way shorter back when so very early marriages were somewhat the norm. Got a feeling that nieces and nephews were 'readily 'coupled'!
@@georgiabackroads8906life expectancy wasn’t shorter. Many people make the mistake of looking at average life span which is not the same. Averages include the high infant mortality. For a more realistic life expectancy you need to look at those who made it through the early years.
I really don't know how to put the questions forth I have without seeming judgemental. And they are many. Moms Mabley's routines would frequently elude to her having been married off to an 89 year old man when she was 14 by prearrangement. IDK, she was a card for her day! But these things happened! It STILL happens in the world. I call it Barbaric that girls And Boys have no choice in the matter. Ahh, but on stage, she once quipped about dating Brook Benton until he got toward his 30's, then dumped him! "Anytime you see me Wit' some Man ovahh 30, he a Relative! " Hope to see more on this Dear.❤
My mother had me when she was a child she was the tinder age of 14. That means she was 13 when she became pregnant. I am curious as to the age of the husband of the young girl of 12 that died. Child abuse ran rapid back in the day just as much as it does today. The only difference is it was not talked about. The majority of the time it was people within the family abusing the young children, or the young children were being sold just like today.
Sounds like also could have been a death bed marriage. She really wanted to marry some young man and he obliged on her death bed. You want to see if there is a story here, look up her husband.
We've researched both families and came up with some additional information but not enough to give us a full story. That's why I wrote the poem (I do that sometimes when I can't do a full story). The husband and his father were carpenters. Those in her family were mostly working in cotton mills. We didn't find anything suggesting a death-bed marriage. Thank you for viewing and commenting.
I have no idea how an adult man could be attracted to let alone fall in love with a 12 year old girl. Definitely a very different time in social and legal acceptance and tolerance .
So very true. There were so many differences between their culture and ours that it is hard for us to get a good measure of what they thought and why they did the things they did. The reverse is true, too. They'd have little comprehension of some of the things we think and do today. We do some things so much better; other things, not so much.
I lived in Cedartown for 38 years and just recently moved to North Carolina. There was an elementary school principal named Starnes some years ago. I wonder if there was any relation.
Here's an Appalling little tidbit. 6 States still have NO AGE LIMIT in 2024 on getting married!!!! California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Washington, Michigan and Mississippi 😱😰🥵
Annie, that's incorrect. Every state in the US has minimum ages to marry set at 17, 18, or 19. With certain permissions you can marry at younger ages. California has no minimum but does require parental consent and approval of a court of law. Getting judicial permission for a young teen would be nearly impossible if not impossible. As for those other states, they also impose conditions. For instance, in Mississippi the unrestricted age to marry is 21. With parental consent, a male as young as 17 and a female as young as 15 can marry. Below that requires judicial approval.
Well, he did at least seem to care. but that's enough to make even the bravest feel ill. One of my ancestors married someone young so she could have insurance. They lived separate lives in separate houses until she was older. But my heart still hurts for her. It's not right and its not fair and it calls to you across time. The hurt never quite stops richocheting.
It's not really. There are very limited exceptions that require things like judicial approval for marriages below age 16 or 17. So, for the sake of clarity, statistically there is no chance that a 18-year-old could marry a 12-year-old today.
My maternal grandmother was 13 when she married my grandfather was 16. They had 15 children. They were 14 and 17 when my aunt was born. She had two kids the year I was born and her last the same year my sister was born. There is a 25 year gap between the oldest and the youngest. My mom and most of her sisters were married by the time they were 17. She was 18 when I was born.
Gravestones can be wrong, as can obituaries. You would need to check birth records, church registrations, and or christening records to find out for sure.
I know that back in the day they married young and it happened a lot and everywhere, but, this is my thing, these were practically little girls and the "men” marrying these little girls were adults. Did they just take advantage of these girls situations? That’s what it looks like to me. Older men "marrying” little girls.
Sometimes the situations were as awful as they seem, other times they were loving relationships between young folks who had already stepped into adulthood or were prepared to do so. Today, we are so on guard against pedophilia and similar abuses of youngsters that the very possibility raises our hackles and makes us angry. That anger is justified but it can also cloud our judgment, especially when we aren't knowledgeable about a people, a culture, a time, their mores, and their conditions. That's the case here. We don't have enough information to stand in judgment of Jim or Hattie or their parents. They may have been very mature, and the marriage may have been a loving relationship knowingly and voluntarily entered into. Or not. It may have been abusive and horrid. But we can't categorically deny the possibility that this was fine just because it isn't by our standards today.
No not anger. Just an observation. And it’s not this story in particular. There’s a lot of stories about little girls, and I mean under the age of 17, being married to older men. And it’s not about them or their families, it’s about these men choosing such young girls instead of women their age. And unfortunately, this still happens.
I was married @ 15 l, 1st child @ 14! Not easy but sometimes you are just ahead of your time, do I regret it? It’s a question I can’t answer because this life can be tricky
19th Century Amerca not a fairy tale, especially in Post war South. Infrastructure wrecked, families split up and destroyed. So to marry so young is more practical considering the background of how wartorn certain areas were. Much suffering so why these arrangements were necessary. Unfortunately, life had other ideas for this couple. Much respect to young Hannah. Had timelines and circumstances been different, you could see the seeds of a loving relationship.
Out in the old West settlers, ranchers, cowboys would buy the daughters of other settlers. Women were scarce but the ones there would have a baby every year so there was always help on the place plus maybe a little $ or 'trade' as the girls grew. When the women lost their husbands they didn't stay widows long.
This would have been exceptional and exceedingly rare. Most settlers would have looked out for the best interests of their daughters, just as most people do today.
Missouri State Sen. Mike Moon (R-Ash Grove) said on the floor Tuesday that he knew at least one person who got married at 12 years old and followed up with a comment of “Guess what, they’re still married. He then "clarified" that she got pregnant by 12 years old, and she was of a similar age, and the parents agreed to marriage.... Because that makes it right? SMH
please folks, you have to understand. Back then, people were destitute, and the children upon reaching Dating Age were not discouraged from marrying a sweetheart. Now, the young gal died from typhoid is a tragedy in itself. Again, there were no public water systems with treated tap water. Ground water wasn't even tested by any municipality because there were no tests back then. Couples way back then had to have a lot of children, because there were no inoculations available. They weren't even invented yet. When you go through old time cemeteries, you see grave after grave of parents surrounded by their young children. children dying in their very young age youth. People got married in the earliest times of our century because of Family Needs. Your children were your Pension Plans. There were no Senior aging Pension plans. Your children were your aging years pensions. They took over the family farms. They took over the family small business.
James David Starnes lived from 10/20/1889 - 7/1/1953. On Find-a-grave, Hattie is listed as his first wife. He would have been 18 when they married. With his second wife, he had 3 sons. Growing up, the mother one of my good neighborhood friends was rumored to have been 14 when she got married. She and her husband were a very devoted couple. After they died and Find-A-Grave was founded, I went on there and discovered that my friend's mother was 13 when they got married and her husband was 21. They were married for over 50 years. She was such a nice lady - she looked more like a teenager than a neighborhood mom. She taught me how to ride a bike (in 1959).
Jim Starnes was 18 or 19 when he married Hattie. There's more info in the comments below, though not a great deal. In my opinion, we didn't find sufficient facts to make an informed judgment about Jim, whether he was good or bad or indifferent. Thank you for viewing and commenting!
It probably was more common in rural areas than in urban areas, because farmwork required "all available hands," meaning children joined the work force early. I think it was pretty common everywhere, though. For mid teens, it remained fairly common into the 1930s or 1940s.
My grandma married my grandpa at 17 and he was 22 I think. It was very common and they sent love letters back and forth to each other. They were so extremely loving people and together for 75 years of marriage before my grandfather passed weeks after of dementia complications. I thought for sure she'd go just soon after him, but she passed just a couple weeks ago almost 5 years to the date from my grandpa's passing. They were both 91 though when they passed. In the hospital she looked past me and said, "Dad?" That's what she'd call my grandpa. Back then people married young. There are perverts in the world that prey on young kids, but I know many young girls at 12 getting STDs and knocked up fooling around from good families. Getting married meant you'd be taken care of by a man back in the day
Typhoid fever, or was that a cover for something even more tragic, such as becoming pregnant and dying because her little body couldn't handle it? Rest in Peace, little Hattie...
Some veterans of the American Civil War later in life would marry a young girl. Some of the brides were in their late teens, some younger. The point of many of the marriages was not to provide the veteran with a wife but to provide for the young girl and her family. When the war veteran died his young wife would inherit his pension.
That's true. It happened quite often, at least in the South, between 1900 and 1930, after the southern states created pensions for veterans and, upon their deaths, their spouses. When a young woman didn't have what seemed to be good prospects for marriage or self-support, she would marry an elderly veteran, most of whom were by then in their 70s or 80s. These widows kept receiving the pension until their own deaths, some of which were in the 1980s and 1990s (and I think a few even later).
@@georgiabackroads8906you are correct. The last Civil War widow died in 2020. She married at 17, and her husband was 93.
@@lisasharf1442 Thanks, Lisa. I'll follow up on that information. We're working on a story about December-May marriages (I think that's the old term) for the magazine, and the Confederate pension arrangements will be included.
In the mid 1950’s when my dad was in the USAF we lived in Marianna, FL. My parents hired a local man to contract the construction of a new home. At the time he was in his mid 50’s and his mother had recently passed away. He told my parents that his father, when in his mid 20’s, was a surgeon in the Army of Northern Virginia. Many years later as an adult I found the gentleman again when I took my young family to tour the where area I’d grown up and I asked him if that were true or did they misunderstand and it was his grandfather. He confirmed it was his father, that his mother was a teenager when they married and his father was in his late 60’s.
In the 1990s, I knew a lawyer in Cartersville, Georgia, whose grandfather was born in 1811 and served in the Confederate Congress. And, within the past ten years, a very fine gentleman in our community died. His grandfather was a Confederate soldier and one of his great-grandfathers was killed in action at South Mountain, Maryland, in 1862. That kind of generational depth is always fascinating and a bit amazing. Thank you for posting.
I did some digging and found that Hattie’s husband, Jim J Starnes, went on to marry a lady named Bertha. In the 1910 census, the young couple were living with Jim’s parents (James and Jennie Starnes) at 583 Marietta Street, Atlanta, Fulton County, GA. This shows this is Jim’s second marriage, his age was 23 and Bertha was 19. They did not have any children yet. Jim would have been about 21 when he married Hattie. The gravestone next to Hattie’s in your video is that of Jim’s mother, Jennie, who later died in 1924. I was hoping to find more info about Hattie’s family but couldn’t. I wonder if her parents also died of typhoid and that’s why she married so young.. maybe there was no other family around?
Jim was 18 or 19 when he married Hattie. Hattie's maiden name was Stephens. Her family came from Cherokee County, Georgia. I think some of her folks were textile mill workers and/or tenant farmers, so not well-to-do. If I remember correctly, her parents did not die of typhoid and lived many years after she died. Thank you for searching and posting what you found!
Oh my gosh!
I can't imagine.
When I was twelve, I still wore size 6 girl's clothes.
I didn't even know the full mechanics of what happened during sex until learning about it in 10th grade biology class.
As a child, seeing a grown man naked would be traumatizing, so having to submit to sex with him would be unimaginably gross. 🤢
Thank you for watching the video and then sharing your thoughts.
TOTALLY agree ! 😳
My gosh, you were tiny!
My aunt married and had her first baby at the age of 13. Her and her husband stayed married to each other all their lives. It was a happy marriage and they prospered together. This was in the early 1950's. Strange things happen in this world and they are not always bad.
My Great Grandma who raised me with my Great Grandpa age 21 got married at 12. Her Mama died and her Daddy was sending all the kids someplace else to live. She adored my G Grandpa. So she asked her dad if she could marry him instead. He agreed. My Grandpa married her on a bear skinned rug.
G. Grandpa was a hunter. A barber by trade. He moved to Los Angeles where eventually was born. GranGran Go said and bought a tent and became an ordained minister. She had one girl my Nana. My G Grandpa was so wonderful and GranGran was strict. He died when I was nine. It broke my heart. Things sure have changed.
My Grandmother was only 12 when she wed and had her first baby when she was 13. She went on to raise 9 children 2 daughters and 7 sons, my father being the youngest. My grandparents both passed in 1960, I was just an infant.
😢
Eww, she was a little girl. Shocking.
My best friend at 19 married a 15 year old girl.I think BOTH of them were virgins when they met.They are the ONLY couple I know still married.Married since 1976. 48 years and counting.God blessed both of them.
:)
My friend is 89 and her son is 75. She was from Georgia and was wed at 13 and she had the baby the following year. She said that was not unusual. The father was 22. In many places that would be illegal.
It would be illegal today. It was probably legal in her day in most of the states.
@@mchapman1928 Thanks for the information, though I don't think it's up to date. I think all states now have unrestricted marriage ages of 17, 18 or 19. But some have younger ages with certain permissions, parental or sometimes judicial, and some have exceptions if the female is pregnant. So, it's pretty complicated and nuanced.
@@georgiabackroads8906 - Possibly. The INTERNET has been known to be wrong. lol. I’m aware of the pregnancy situations, I’m came across that as a judge. I can understand Alaska having a young age because of the indigenous people there, customs. Personally, I feel 16 should be the youngest age allowed. Then again, some people mature early, and some never mature.
@@mchapman1928 California age of consent is 18, the ONLy exception would be if a judge allowed it, and given how severe Califfornia law is, that is unlikely. SO basically the age for marriage in California is 18.
Source: I was a foster parent of a teenager, I had to know the relevant laws.
@@mildredherring1904 - True. If you read my other posts, the legal age to marry is under 18 in most states, Alaska is 15. I had a trial where a 14 year old white girl, accused a 33 year old black man of having consensual sex with her numerous times. She gave very specific times and dates. This was in the South about 25 years ago. An all white jury heard the case. He was found not guilty, because it was proved she lied and made up the entire accusation. She accused the man because she was dating his younger brother and she wanted to make him jealous. It was proven the man was in the hospital having major back surgery and was in recovery on the dates he was supposed to be climbing up a ladder into her bedroom.
Not all accusations are truthful.
My mom was born in a small mountain town in Virginia. She married her first husband when she was 16. This was in the 50’s. She just wanted to escape the small town and find a better life for herself. Her marriage only lasted a few years and then she made it on her own for a few years until she met my dad. Her life wasn’t always easy but at least she did what she thought best for herself. I’m glad she did or I wouldn’t be here.
Very similar to my mother’s experience. Although she stayed married for a longer time. She just needed an escape from the crippling poverty of that Virginia mountain town.
@@johntalbott1553 it happens a lot in those towns. No jobs besides the coal mines and the businesses that support them really.
My Mum was 16, my Dad 23 when they married. They had 6 children, 14 grandchildren, and 21 greatgrandchildren. My Dad passed August 2024 aged 88. My Mum in aged care with dementia. My Mum would always say to me when I became a Mum that as a Mum you go to bed at night and have a good cry, then get up in the morning and do it all over again. Must have been so hard for her, but it was not obvious to us.
My grandmother was 14 when she was married and had her first child. She passed a few months shy of her 101st birthday, and was survived by all of the children she had birthed.
Rural South Carolina, would have been the 1920s.
*All* the children she had birthed? That's one lucky lady, at least in that department.
My great grandmother got married at 15 in 1917. Had her first child, my great aunt, in 1918. Died in 1932 at age 29 from cancer, leaving behind a husband and four children.
Married at 12? Heck I was barely ready for it when I was 24. 😂❤😂❤
I know what you mean!
Heck it was 38 for me. Lol
I was 2 weeks shy of 21, I was ready and we have been together for 35 years. But 12…..ugh, NO!
The life expectancy for females born in 1850 was 41 years, born in 1890 was 44 years. They had to grow up and reproduce fast.
@@user-bg2oi4bz3p I think you mean that the "average life expectancy" was in the early 40s back then. But your point is well taken. The average life expectancy of females in the USA today is in the 70s, I believe.
My great grandmothers eldest sister was born 1899 and married 1912. Her first husband shipped off to Europe and didn't come back, leaving her with with an infant at the age of 14. She married again at 17 and had nine children. Her four eldest signed up for the army in 1938 and again, didn't come back. I never got to meet her as she passed in 1995 but one of her sisters is still around and swears it was very very common back then. Her first husband was, however, 17 to her 13 which although definitely not okay today is a far cry from being the same age as her own father. This was in NZ but I find it interesting how this was once fairly standard.
My Dad Married 3 times! My Mom was 17yrs old & the other 2 girls before my Mother was 11 & 12yrs old! 2 son's by one of his wives & 2 girl's by the other😮
Back in those days; marriage at any age was just one less mouth to feed!
Thinking you young lady and your life you are not forgotten. I told my daughter about you. Your life must not have been easy to get married at twelve years old. I hope you rest in piece easier than you did on earth you deserve to be in heaven after such a tough life on earth. Thinking of you Rip.
Wendy, that's a lovely way of expressing your feelings and remembering Hattie. I, too, told my daughter about Hattie. :)
My 4x great grandmother was married at 14 to a man who was 30 after his first wife died. He had two children 12 and 10. She became their stepmother.
Well,at those ages, hopefully they were able to get along 🙏🏽👍🏽
I got married at 20 but a lot of people in my family got married at 17 or later, my mom was married at 15 and had me at 16 in 1974. My son is still single at 26 and I think that’s good, gives him time to experience things before settling down. 😊
My wife and I had our wedding when she was 19 and I was 21, still very much in love all these years later. People always comment that we were so young to have married, but all we wanted in life was to be together, that being said, I cant imagine being married at 12. Differnt times and cultures.....thank you for this glimpse.
Thank you for watching and for your thoughtful comment.
Not different times or cultures - child marriage is still legal in some US states
It was a different time and culture, yippee. Marriages in the young teenage years were fairly common and accepted. In today's time they are illegal except in very rare circumstances that require pretty strict scrutiny. In no state in the US today can 15 year olds choose to marry one another, let alone a 12 year old. And there are lots of other restrictions imposed by the various states.
@@georgiabackroads8906 Google 'is child marriage legal in the US'.
We were 18 and 20 when we married. 52 years this fall.
12-year old marriages were NOT unusual back then, in fact, in many places in the USA, and the world, it was COMMONPLACE
Rest in peace. Bless your heart, you are not forgotten.
My ex’s ancestor was 19 yrs older than his wife. They married when she was 14 in 1804. This was in Spanish Florida.
I recently looked at the 1930 census and found that my paternal great-grandmother was living with my paternal grandparents at that time. I had to double check a few things because my grandfather was shown to be 27, and his mother was 38. It turns out the census was correct. In 1902 Alabama, my 11 year old great-grandmother was married and having a child.
Yikes, that wasn’t normal even for back then. 😬
Wow.
People married for a lot of reasons back then. He might have needed help if he was left with young children. She may have had no other family left. The speculation leads to heartbreak. Rest in peace.
Grandma married when she was 13. She was an orphan living with an aunt and uncle and their large family. Many young girls in this situation married not only for love but also convenience. At that time having a husband meant having security. In Grandma's case, she loved him very much.
Thanks for sharing a story from your own background. There were so many such "young" marriages in the early 1900s and before, some perfectly fine and some not fine for one reason or another. Your Grandma had a good story. :)
I know someone personally who married at 14 in the 1960s. They are still together and the most loving couple! I know that is an unusual case. My grandmother was basically in an arranged marriage in the late 1800s at the age of 16 and she was treated badly according to my Mom. She and two or three siblings traveled from one state to another to marry siblings of another family.
"merry" is totally different from "get merried": to get forced into marriage, sold like kettle, raped as slave...
@@moped975 That's right. We don't have enough information here to know for certain why Hattie and Jim married.
@@georgiabackroads8906 The young couple I mentioned are in their 70s now and yesterday he picked her a bouquet of wildflowers. My grandpa was abusive to grandma and their 9 children.
It has not been that unusual throughout history of mankind until the last 70-80 years
In medieval Europe people didn’t marry very young, only the wealthy and powerful did to secure property and form alliances. And even then the marriage wasn’t always consummated until the couple was a bit older.
@@kellydalstok8900 Marie Antoinette was not married even by proxy until she reached puberty at nearly 15. Then a proxy wedding was allowed while she was still in Austria and then later she went to France. Church law allowed marriage at 12 for girls, 14 for boys because those were the earliest ages at which people would reach puberty. But the Church law recommended the couple be at least two years older than the minimal age. In fact, most were considerably older, usually early 20s for women. Certain areas of the United States were known for very early marriages going way back.
In Georga then it could have been the poverty,working young or other things. It's always been as tough State. Lots of rich folks and folks with nothing. A great Georgian Jimmy Carter would know of these things before and while he was Govenor and perhaps President. Bless all those who's life's were cut short by the curse of poverty in Georia and elsewhere.🇺🇲🙏😢
Grandmother married at 12, aunt married at 13....times and people were different just 70 or 80 yrs. ago.
I've been a Georgia resident for nearly 30 years now ... But I was born and raised in Virginia. My great grandmother was also born in 1895 and married at the age of 14 - her groom was 21. This was not at all unusual in the foothills of the Blue Ridge ... She lived to be 87.
May Hattie be in Eternal Peace. Sad story. Btw, some young ones are married kind of like an adoption. Also some are marked to inherit the pension of the older husband . Some are married because they have no family and marriage gives them a home with food and shelter. It’s not always about indecency!!
yes but it is still concerning that a 47 years old married a 12 year old little girl
@@muddychile5119Hattie’s husband wasn’t anywhere near 47.
ALL of those sound pretty indecent. 😮
Right. Hattie's husband was 18 or 19.
My dad's grandparents were unique. My great grandma was 26 and her husband was 16. She owned a farm in Northern Michigan. Once her husband hit 21 she got a divorce (story is he tried to take her land) and married a Hungarian immigrant instead. That man adopted the 3 oldest girls to give them a better chance in life since their parents were ojibwe and natives weren't considered American citizens back then.
My mother's parents got married at 15 and 18. My grandma's mom was in an asylum and dad had abandoned them and my grandpa was an orphan.
What kind of person marries a 12 year old? Like, for real... I find this truly sickening.
Girls married for different reasons: pregnancy, no guardians (parents died), illness on a deathbed, etc. it’s very common for a 12 yr old to die in childbirth, ectopic pregnancy, toxemia, etc. Having a baby at 12 increases the chance of death exponentially.
Especially in the 1800s.
In the third world, teen mothers have a higher mortality rate. I said in another comment it's sort of puzzling that even girls of 18 to 19 would have a higher mortality rate but apparently there is a some final growth that takes place after the teens that just makes the body more capable. And yet girls can get pregnant so young. It's a strange fluke of nature.
The life expectancy of you were poor back then was only 45 for men and 47 for most women. The middle and upper classes lived longer due to decreased heavy labor (desk jobs) and better health and nutrition. Many women died in childbirth back then as babies were delivered at home and by a midwife. As a consequence marriage and children came ata much younger age. 13 years old was about average in many states then. Not all girls played with or could afford dolls then either, instead they were taught to run a home (cook clean mend clothes) from a very early age, starting at age three the girls were given tasks and even worked in the fields. As a consequence girls were often ready to be a wife by age thirteen and had an equivalent maturity to someone today of about twenty or more years old. There was really no childhood to speak of in this life, poor families and share croppers did this out of necessity. Both my grandmothers told me this was the way then.
@@charlottekey8856until a female is 20, she is still adding calcium to her bones. In addition to a regular prenatal vitamin, Doctors have females under 20 take additional calcium. If a pregnant woman does not have enough calcium, the body takes it from bones and teeth. There can be lifelong consequences from that especially if she has several back to back.
@@tenabarnes3269 it wasn’t just the poor. The rate of death due to whooping cough, pneumonia, chickenpox, measles, etc for children 0-5 was 50%. There were no treatments for cancer, many pregnancy issues, heart disease, polio, tuberculosis, cholera, etc. These affected the poor at a higher rate but frequently killed the wealthy.
My grandmothers tell 2 sides of the story, one wealthy and one extremely poor from birth (both white). On the poor side my great grandparents immigrated from Germany in the 1890s. My grandmother was born shortly after in 1898. She went to thru 2nd grade and required to quit to start work as a washerwoman’s assistant. She was 7yrs old. She married at 13/14, and quickly produced 3 children. Her husband died in his late 20s of illness. She never stopped working. She remarried by arrangement in 1933 in her early 30s to a farmer in his early 60s. The agreement was to allow her parents and children to live with them. She worked in the home, cared for their children, maintained a large garden for canning and worked the fields at certain times of the year. She had 7 live children and lived to be 76, she died of stomach cancer.
My other grandmother lived to 87, she would have died 15 yrs earlier but she had to have xrays of her lungs for volunteer work and they found cancer in one lobe of her lungs. It was removed and she lived another 15 years.
Life was extremely hard in the early days. Age really wasn't a problem in getting married. Things you learn along the way of life and the era changes.
My niece was married at 15-1/2 to a 25 year old. I was do mad at my sister at the time for allowing it. My niece divorced in her early 30,'s after 3 children. She gave birth at 16 or 17. Sad really.
My parents were 16 and 25 whenever they married and had me. They’re still together today 45 years later
That been going on for a long time. They married young back in the old days
Throughout time it was common for teens to marry. People grew up sooner and shouldered adult responsibilities at a much younger age. Therefore, it was more common for a 13-year-old or 16-year-old to marry. In their cultures, in their times, it was more common for them to be ready than we'd be today.
They are still marrying at this same tender age in the US 😊(secretly and illegally)and in tons of other countries openly. Females are still treated like property to be sold, bartered, beaten and battered. Humans are savage to each other. Accountability will happen.
In part, because most people didn't live a long life. Also, they were ready for adulthood sooner than many people are today.
@@timgreen4137 Yeah 40 was considered old age, today's 70.
They didn’t have time to become juvenile delinquents, did they?
Sadly, many girls were married off as soon as they started menstruation. Parents had a hard time feeding the family and they didn’t want girls getting pregnant and staying unwed. They pushed them into marriage when they "became a woman." That age is often 11, 12, or 13.
Thank you for viewing and sharing your thoughts. While hunger can be an issue anywhere and anytime, for many rural families that wasn't the case. Alot of rural Americans said that they didn't even realize there was a Great Depression because they were already poor but also because they lived on farms and raised their own food. Boys and girls were helpful in farm chores. And while some girls would have been "pushed" into marriage, most probably did so voluntarily. The culture felt they were ready. They felt they were ready.
@@georgiabackroads8906it’s what they had been training for.
I had my period at 10 so this is a disturbing thought.
My husband's Uncle married at 18 to a 13 year old bride.They had a wonderful family and were married over 50 years. They were a loving couple and had many friends.
Thank you for adding that information, lakesidesusan. That's the kind of relationship that came to mind when I found Hattie's grave in February, knowing that these things happened fairly often.
OH MY GOODNESS 😢😢😢😢 IN ALL, WOW I'M SHOCKED 😮😮😮 BUT BLESS U FOR LETTING US KNOW!!!!!!
Thank you for viewing and reading. Your comment is very thoughtful and appreciated.
that is absolutely very sad. I don't know. I never could understand how a pastor could look at a child bride and a clearly grown man and be okay with doing this. I know times were different but It is disgusting to take a child and concerning when their parents or relatives just want to get a child out of their house so they don't have to feed them. This world depresses me.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. In certain circumstances in that era, these were adults or near-adults who made the decision mutually and voluntary. Not all of them, by any means, but some of them. So their families and communities celebrated those unions with no idea that 100 or 150 years later, a modern society with its own serious ills would look down on them with suspicion and contempt.
My daughter died when she was 12. I cannot imagine her being married at that age she was still such a baby. In the hospital toward the end of her life I was shocked that she'd become old enough they had to perform a pregnancy test before surgery. I'm like she's 12! Poor Hattie.
Wow, that's a heartbreaking thing to endure. THank you for sharing and thinking of Hattie.
Not so unusual.I have an aunt that was married at 13 in 1960 in rural Mississippi.My grandmother and mother both said that she[the aunt] went from playing with doll babies to having real babies.My uncle [whom she married]was 18. I am going to guess it was a shotgun wedding.She left my uncle after about 15 years and 4 children wanting more out of life than he could give her.She married a man from Kilmichael Mississippi and the two moved to the big city of Memphis and She produced two more children.
Remember folks that things were different over 100 years ago. In the BACKWOODS, life was harder and childhood was over by 8 years old. Children were expected to go out and work at extremely young ages in very menial and poorly paid jobs. Boys like my own father were working a grown man's job on the railroads at age 14 in order to bring home money to feed all the over mouths in the house while his father worked an unproductive dirt farm with frequently poor harvests. Often parents expected girls to marry as soon as possible so there would be one less mouth to feed at home. Also girls matured at an earlier age back then so it was not unusual for them to prefer getting married and setting up their own household rather than staying home and sharing a bed with younger bed wetting siblings. So yes, at age 12 a girl would be easily persuaded to leave home and get married which was preferable to picking cotton or working in sweat mills all day. Twelve then was more like eighteen today.
Children did grow up early but that wasn't necessarily oppressive or wrong. More than half of American families lived on farms where everyone worked together and everyone chipped in. Some families were broken or unloving but many were just fine. In contrast, in today's time we've created (or tolerate) a culture in which children "grow up" much sooner than in earlier days. That would be in terms of innocence. In too many ways children today are exposed to things that take from them their childhoods. So, as is often the case, it can be challenging for one generation to criticize the flaws of another. We're all pretty flawed in varying ways.
In 17th century New France (what became Quebec in Canada) there was a law mandating that all females be married by age 14 and all males be married by age 16.
Huh. I didn't know that. Thank you for sharing.
Wow! Unreal. I've heard in some areas you were considered an old maid if not married at age 14. 😮 The term old maid is ridiculous 🙄 Bless her heart ❤️ Having an entire life by age 12. 🙏
Marlene, thank you for your note. By the way, your "Bless her heart" is a nice sentiment used appropriately. From many posts I've seen on the internet, some people seem to think that "Bless his heart" or "Bless her heart" is a criticism, as it would be in a sentence like "Bless her heart, she didn't know any better." But just as often the meaning is just as you conveyed, "Poor thing!"
I had a friend that got pregnant at age 14 . Got married. It lasted 2 years. Her Dad died and She finally went back to school at age 40 to get a job.
I worked with a nurse many years ago, who married her first husband at 15.
New Subscriber. Love Graves and anything history.
Me too! Thank you for viewing and sharing a comment.
Very interesting. I suspect the 12 yo age at marriage was not that uncommon at the time. What was unusual was any of it was documented. Shocks lots of folks now but back when infant mortality was ginormous and life expectancy maybe half or less of that now? Anything was possible . . .
I found the obituary for my grandmother who passed at 29. My mom was born out of wedlock and was only 8. But my grandmother had gotten married to a much younger man and had two babies with him who were 3 and 16 months when she passed. Anyway, her obituary said she was 24 when she passed. I think it was to cover that she was way older than her husband. I think he had been only 17 when they wed. (Weird I know.) I think she was about 24 when they married. I found that odd and it could be confusing someday for someone doing ancestry. Her headstone does have the correct birthdate and death on them. While she wasn’t so young like this girl, I think the obit was changed for the same type of reason
My grandparents were children in that time and married at age 27.
That isn’t the ole days, it’s just the backroad.
Elaine, I'm not sure what you mean. If you mean young teen marriages only happened on the backroads, I don't think that's the case at all. It was common in cities too, though probably more common in rural areas where people were already working and pretty much considered adults by the teen years. In 1908, a larger percentage of Americans were rural than urban. American didn't become predominantly urban until 1920. Today, less than 20% of Americans live in rural areas.
That's really sad. Headstones can be wrong. My dad's was wrong and we asked them to do it again with the correct information. They did it again, but they did it exactly how they did before, with the wrong information. My mom thought about just leaving it wrong because fighting with the headstone company was getting to be too much for her.
You're right. My wife has an ancestor whose last name is spelled incorrectly on his headstone. Thank you for watching and taking a moment to share your thoughts. :)
From Australia - my reading and family history research seem to point to older men wedding younger women. The reasons for this are that an older man can provide for a wife and family and a young woman benefits from the protection inherent in marriage to a proven provider. Convicts, bounty immigrants and free settlers in this mix, many/most without support of family.
My grandmother married at 13 and had fist child at 14
She went on to have 10 and lived a happy life
Good grief! How old was Jim Starnes???
Jim was 18 or 19. He would later remarry and have several children. He lived until about 1953.
In ga, up until the 90 s a 14 yr old could married and in the 80 s a 12 yr old could be married... still today we can get married here that young but now have to have a parents signature
I think the marriage age in Georgia increased from 14 to 16 in 1995, then to 17 just a couple of years ago.
Unmarried women in their 20s back then, were considered old maids.
@@PutinsMommyNeverHuggedHimin our world, but the world then was very different. If you lived to your mid 40's, you were old, this you did many things at half the age we do now.
Thank you for this information. This is very interesting. Do you happen to know more of what happened to her young husband? I read a source that said he was 12 as well.
He was 18 or 19 when they married. He and his father were carpenters in Cedartown in northwest Georgia. I think they moved to Atlanta where Jim met Hattie Stephens. Her family was tenant farmers and textile mill workers from Cherokee County, who I also believe came to Atlanta. After Hattie died, Jim remarried and had children. He lived until about 1953.
No one should ever be married at 12..Its sick!
Exactly, I'm a 51-year Italian woman and I was still playing in the mud and with my dolls when I was 12. It's just way too young. 😢
@@RSMR7. I wonder why anyone would marry that young?
The possibilities are almost endless, ranging from love (on the positive side) to compulsion (on the negative side).
I propose the question that I’ve long wondered regarding why the female body at such young ages is even ‘ready’ to be impregnated,carry, and deliver a baby anyway?? Yet its is very often so. NOT advocating for it at all but it’s always been perplexing to me upon learning of it. ( female adult here btw )
@@sosteve9113 Possibly to be married before she died? The coincidence is too great to be accidental.
My paternal grandma was married at 19 and a mom as well by 19 in 1901. Grandpa was 26 at the time of the wedding.
I was taking summer school one year. And met a gal who was married at 16. I wonder how she is doing these days. The summer school that year was held at Anoka Senior High.
Thank you for sharing that story, Suzette.
Wow such a sad story !!!!!
Wow! I suppose life expectancy was way shorter back when so very early marriages were somewhat the norm. Got a feeling that nieces and nephews were 'readily 'coupled'!
Yeah, life expectancy was much shorter. It wasn't too uncommon for first cousins to marry.
@@georgiabackroads8906life expectancy wasn’t shorter. Many people make the mistake of looking at average life span which is not the same. Averages include the high infant mortality. For a more realistic life expectancy you need to look at those who made it through the early years.
I really don't know how to put the questions forth I have without seeming judgemental. And they are many.
Moms Mabley's routines would frequently elude to her having been married off to an 89 year old man when she was 14 by prearrangement. IDK, she was a card for her day! But these things happened! It STILL happens in the world. I call it Barbaric that girls And Boys have no choice in the matter.
Ahh, but on stage, she once quipped about dating Brook Benton until he got toward his 30's, then dumped him! "Anytime you see me Wit' some Man ovahh 30, he a Relative! "
Hope to see more on this Dear.❤
This was very interesting and how nowadays is so changed.
reminder that child marriage is still legal in many states!
Below the age of 17 its limited in every state, requiring either parental or judicial consent.
Both of my aunts married at 16 or so and that was in the 1940's. Childhood was really short.
My mother had me when she was a child she was the tinder age of 14. That means she was 13 when she became pregnant. I am curious as to the age of the husband of the young girl of 12 that died. Child abuse ran rapid back in the day just as much as it does today. The only difference is it was not talked about. The majority of the time it was people within the family abusing the young children, or the young children were being sold just like today.
Jim Starnes was 18 or 19 when he married Hattie.
I have a great aunt who married at 14 would have been in around 1918 they had 11 children and remained marry until his death this was in Pennsylvania
Thank you for sharing, Nancy. Hey, I had a beloved great aunt who was born in 1904, though in Georgia.
Sounds like also could have been a death bed marriage. She really wanted to marry some young man and he obliged on her death bed.
You want to see if there is a story here, look up her husband.
We've researched both families and came up with some additional information but not enough to give us a full story. That's why I wrote the poem (I do that sometimes when I can't do a full story). The husband and his father were carpenters. Those in her family were mostly working in cotton mills. We didn't find anything suggesting a death-bed marriage. Thank you for viewing and commenting.
I have no idea how an adult man could be attracted to let alone fall in love with a 12 year old girl. Definitely a very different time in social and legal acceptance and tolerance .
So very true. There were so many differences between their culture and ours that it is hard for us to get a good measure of what they thought and why they did the things they did. The reverse is true, too. They'd have little comprehension of some of the things we think and do today. We do some things so much better; other things, not so much.
Times gone by!!
I lived in Cedartown for 38 years and just recently moved to North Carolina. There was an elementary school principal named Starnes some years ago. I wonder if there was any relation.
There's a decent chance they are related. Starnes is a bit of an unusual name so likely those with that name in Cedartown were related.
Here's an Appalling little tidbit. 6 States still have NO AGE LIMIT in 2024 on getting married!!!! California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Washington, Michigan and Mississippi 😱😰🥵
Annie, that's incorrect. Every state in the US has minimum ages to marry set at 17, 18, or 19. With certain permissions you can marry at younger ages. California has no minimum but does require parental consent and approval of a court of law. Getting judicial permission for a young teen would be nearly impossible if not impossible. As for those other states, they also impose conditions. For instance, in Mississippi the unrestricted age to marry is 21. With parental consent, a male as young as 17 and a female as young as 15 can marry. Below that requires judicial approval.
Well, he did at least seem to care. but that's enough to make even the bravest feel ill.
One of my ancestors married someone young so she could have insurance. They lived separate lives in separate houses until she was older.
But my heart still hurts for her. It's not right and its not fair and it calls to you across time.
The hurt never quite stops richocheting.
It's shocking that this is still legal in some parts of the US.
It's not really. There are very limited exceptions that require things like judicial approval for marriages below age 16 or 17. So, for the sake of clarity, statistically there is no chance that a 18-year-old could marry a 12-year-old today.
My maternal grandmother was 13 when she married my grandfather was 16. They had 15 children. They were 14 and 17 when my aunt was born. She had two kids the year I was born and her last the same year my sister was born. There is a 25 year gap between the oldest and the youngest. My mom and most of her sisters were married by the time they were 17. She was 18 when I was born.
Gravestones can be wrong, as can obituaries. You would need to check birth records, church registrations, and or christening records to find out for sure.
I know that back in the day they married young and it happened a lot and everywhere, but, this is my thing, these were practically little girls and the "men” marrying these little girls were adults. Did they just take advantage of these girls situations? That’s what it looks like to me. Older men "marrying” little girls.
Sometimes the situations were as awful as they seem, other times they were loving relationships between young folks who had already stepped into adulthood or were prepared to do so. Today, we are so on guard against pedophilia and similar abuses of youngsters that the very possibility raises our hackles and makes us angry. That anger is justified but it can also cloud our judgment, especially when we aren't knowledgeable about a people, a culture, a time, their mores, and their conditions. That's the case here. We don't have enough information to stand in judgment of Jim or Hattie or their parents. They may have been very mature, and the marriage may have been a loving relationship knowingly and voluntarily entered into. Or not. It may have been abusive and horrid. But we can't categorically deny the possibility that this was fine just because it isn't by our standards today.
No not anger. Just an observation. And it’s not this story in particular. There’s a lot of stories about little girls, and I mean under the age of 17, being married to older men. And it’s not about them or their families, it’s about these men choosing such young girls instead of women their age. And unfortunately, this still happens.
Shocking. Truly.
Thank you for watching and commenting. :)
My question for chapter two of the story is: how soon did he remarry?
I believe he remarried within a few years. He lived until about 1953 and had a number of children.
Omg this so sad
I was married @ 15 l, 1st child @ 14! Not easy but sometimes you are just ahead of your time, do I regret it? It’s a question I can’t answer because this life can be tricky
RIP BABY GIRL 🙏
19th Century Amerca not a fairy tale, especially in Post war South. Infrastructure wrecked, families split up and destroyed. So to marry so young is more practical considering the background of how wartorn certain areas were. Much suffering so why these arrangements were necessary. Unfortunately, life had other ideas for this couple. Much respect to young Hannah. Had timelines and circumstances been different, you could see the seeds of a loving relationship.
Her name was Hattie, apologies. Darn glasses!
Out in the old West settlers, ranchers, cowboys would buy the daughters of other settlers. Women were scarce but the ones there would have a baby every year so there was always help on the place plus maybe a little $ or 'trade' as the girls grew. When the women lost their husbands they didn't stay widows long.
This would have been exceptional and exceedingly rare. Most settlers would have looked out for the best interests of their daughters, just as most people do today.
Very interesting, thank you for that enlightened poem 👍
Thank you. Writers love feedback like yours. :)
Missouri State Sen. Mike Moon (R-Ash Grove) said on the floor Tuesday that he knew at least one person who got married at
12 years old and followed up with a comment of “Guess what, they’re still married.
He then "clarified" that she got pregnant by 12 years old, and she was of a similar age, and the parents agreed to marriage.... Because that makes it right? SMH
It’s not inherently wrong. I have a twelve year old and unfortunately many of her classmates are already sexually active.
@@Supersquishyawesomenessand that's been going on for decades
@@Supersquishyawesomenessno dude that is inherently wrong. 12-year-olds cannot consent to sex not even with their peers
My mother married at age 13, my dad was 16.
Thank you for contributing that information, Debra. It helps clarify that there was a day when such unions were not exceptional.
please folks, you have to understand. Back then, people were destitute, and the children upon reaching Dating Age were not discouraged from marrying a sweetheart.
Now, the young gal died from typhoid is a tragedy in itself. Again, there were no public water systems with treated tap water. Ground water wasn't even tested by any municipality because there were no tests back then. Couples way back then had to have a lot of children, because there were no inoculations available. They weren't even invented yet.
When you go through old time cemeteries, you see grave after grave of parents surrounded by their young children. children dying in their very young age youth.
People got married in the earliest times of our century because of Family Needs. Your children were your Pension Plans. There were no Senior aging Pension plans. Your children were your aging years pensions. They took over the family farms. They took over the family small business.
What about Jim? Would be VERY interesting to know more about his age at the time.😊
James David Starnes lived from 10/20/1889 - 7/1/1953. On Find-a-grave, Hattie is listed as his first wife. He would have been 18 when they married. With his second wife, he had 3 sons. Growing up, the mother one of my good neighborhood friends was rumored to have been 14 when she got married. She and her husband were a very devoted couple. After they died and Find-A-Grave was founded, I went on there and discovered that my friend's mother was 13 when they got married and her husband was 21. They were married for over 50 years. She was such a nice lady - she looked more like a teenager than a neighborhood mom. She taught me how to ride a bike (in 1959).
Comments have more info on him. He married her at 18 or 19 when he married Hattie. He remarried
Right.. so the real question out of all this is.. how old was the husband?? That ought to signify if the poor girl was the victim of a predator.
Jim Starnes was 18 or 19 when he married Hattie. There's more info in the comments below, though not a great deal. In my opinion, we didn't find sufficient facts to make an informed judgment about Jim, whether he was good or bad or indifferent. Thank you for viewing and commenting!
This seems to have been fairly common in poor, rural areas.
It probably was more common in rural areas than in urban areas, because farmwork required "all available hands," meaning children joined the work force early. I think it was pretty common everywhere, though. For mid teens, it remained fairly common into the 1930s or 1940s.
Yes, happened all the time. Remember that people did live as long as we do now. Maybe 40, sometimes much longer.
Im wondering how long they were married before she did, obviously just a matter of months. So sad.
She was married to Jim only about 5 weeks before she died. Thank you for viewing and commenting!
How old was Jim?
18 or 19
what was the husband's age?? looks like he died Dec 25, 1924?? wish you had gotten more photos
The husband was 18 or 19 when he married Hattie. He died about 1953. The grave you were referring to (12/25/24) is his father's.
so sad!
Sad, indeed, Chester. Thank you for watching and sharing your thoughts.
Poor little Hattie.
My grandma married my grandpa at 17 and he was 22 I think. It was very common and they sent love letters back and forth to each other. They were so extremely loving people and together for 75 years of marriage before my grandfather passed weeks after of dementia complications. I thought for sure she'd go just soon after him, but she passed just a couple weeks ago almost 5 years to the date from my grandpa's passing. They were both 91 though when they passed. In the hospital she looked past me and said, "Dad?" That's what she'd call my grandpa. Back then people married young. There are perverts in the world that prey on young kids, but I know many young girls at 12 getting STDs and knocked up fooling around from good families. Getting married meant you'd be taken care of by a man back in the day
Thank you, Delainey. Your thoughts apply to many aspects of the "young marriages" issue.
Well Georgia says it all. How old was the husband?
He was 17 or 18.
Typhoid fever, or was that a cover for something even more tragic, such as becoming pregnant and dying because her little body couldn't handle it?
Rest in Peace, little Hattie...
How old was Jim Starnes when he married her--do you know?
He was 18 or 19.