The past was a different country!

[Mauvish1]

Has anyone come across very young marriages in their FH research?

I’ve got a few (not all my family as I do other trees as well!)

1709 – Philip Foster Smith (an attorney, age unknown) married Ann Pegge. Ann was just 14. I suspect Anne’s father, who was reasonably wealthy and part of the local gentry, was keen to get her off his hands as she was the only child from his first marriage and he’d subsequently remarried and started a new family, who he clearly favoured in his will. Philip and Ann had their first child a year later.

1774 – Philip Gell of Hopton Hall, at the age of 50, married Dorothy Milnes who was just 16. Dorothy’s brother in law commented after visiting them that she was a pretty little thing but way too young for her husband (you don’t say!!)

1775 – 15 year old Mary Holyland eloped with Dr James Carmichael Smith, who was 28; they married in Gretna Green. Any scandal didn’t do the doctor any harm – he became Physician Extraordinary to King George 3.

1807 –Jane Hale married Henry Whitfeild, a captain in the army. He was 35, Jane was 15.

All these couples moved in respectable and/or wealthy circles. Clearly society did not cast them out - far from it, the girls were probably congratulated on auspicious marriages. But we would be horrified by this happening nowadays - the men would be on the sex offenders register!

Has anyone else similar stories to tell?

"Clearly in technical terms the bride becomes a sister-in-law to her grandparents, and aunt-by-marriage to her parents"

This reminds me of a very old song, sung here by WIllie Nelson, 'I'm my own Grandpa'

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Now, many, many years ago when I was twenty-three
I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be
This widow had a grown-up daughter, had hair of red
My father fell in love with her and soon the two were wed
This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life
My daughter was my mother 'cause she was my father's wife
To complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy
My little baby then became the brother-in-law to Dad
And so became my uncle though it made me very sad
For if he was my uncle, that also made him the brother
Of the widow's grown-up daughter who of course was my step-mother

[Verse 2]
My father's wife then had a son that kept him on the run
And he became my grandchild for he was my daughter's son
My wife is now my mother's mother and it makes me blue
Because she is my wife, she's my grandmother too

[Verse 3]
Now, if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild
And every time I think of it, it nearly drives me wild
For now I have become the strangest case you ever saw
As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa

.

Ach, I've just remembered that I am technically 2nd cousin X3 removed (iirc) to my own mother!

Marrying distant ( or not so distant) relatives was fairly common in the past as generally people would only marry someone if the same class ( which really reduced the pool for the upper classes) and also tended not to travel far so even for the lower classes most people spent their whole life in the same village and after a few generations everyone in the village was related somehow.
Likewise lots of people, women especially, got married to avoid pregnancy out of wedlock. My family tree is full of cases where children were born 7-8 months after the wedding. My grandmother always insisted my mum was born early as she fell off a bus, but she was remarkably big and healthy for a baby born at 32 weeks. In most cases there was less than 5 years between the man and woman ( they were both very young) but yes there were a couple that raised eyebrows.

I think marriage was different in those days especially in middle to upper class. It was often to do with status and making sure money/property stayed in families or avoiding poverty etc rather than love matches.

And for working classes it was often for practical reasons too, especially for widows. It was very common for women who had been widowed and left with 2 or 3 young children to marry again very quickly, within a couple of months. Because they needed financial support. Often the man they married was also a widower with children so it was mutually beneficial - the woman got financial support for her and her children, the man got someone to look after his kids so he could continue working.

So many women died in childbirth and men remarried very quickly. My great great grandfather was widowed in March with one young child and a newborn baby; he married again in May. Another great granduncle was also widowed in August when his wife died of a post birth infection and left with two tiny children; he married the woman he employed to nurse the newborn on New Year's Day of the following year. It looks very odd to us now, but when you think about it, they were working men, there was no welfare system or statutory support, and families could only help out so much.

Lady Margaret Beaufort, the wife of Edmund Tudor - married at 12 - gave birth to her only child, the future King Henry V11 at 13 😮.
She never had any more children and it is thought that the exceptionally difficult labour probably caused permanent physical damage.
She was widowed before her son was born.
Her grandson was Henry V111

It was normal for a woman to go home to her mother when she was near to giving birth, particularly with a first baby, this is probably why she was there on the census. Your mother would act as midwife and help after the baby was born.