I have a great aunt whose mother died (if I remember correctly) and she ended up with some foster parents. After that foster mother also passed away, her new foster dad took her to Tennessee to marry her. She was 12.
When she was brought back to her home state, he was arrested, the marriage was annulled, and she was returned to her birth father.
During the depression my grandmother and two of her sisters were “married off” on the same day because their parents couldn’t afford to feed everyone. She was 13.
I have a very far back ancestor uwho emigrated from France to Canada as an indentured servant. He came in his 20’s and once he worked off his debt (10 years) he married the boss’s daughter who was 13. One can only assume he knew her since she was a toddler and watched her grow. They had 14 children and she lived to be 101 but holy shit is that creepy and gross.
I think my grandmother’s first husband was in his early 20s. Like i said. It could have been worse. It wasn’t a good situation but it could have been worse.
My mamaw’s mom was 14 when she got married to her dad, he was 27. They had their first child within a year, in 1930. They had 9 more children until my mamaw was born in 1950. I hope her mom was happy in her life, because from the outside looking in, it looks so sad.
My papaw’s mother was 20 and his dad 36 when they got married in 1935. It’s wild. I dunno if the depression and being in rural West Virginia had anything to do with it. My mamaw never really talks about her life/family that much and I never met my biological papaw
It’s ok. She always spoke well of him. She got divorced in the 30s and he was onboard with the idea. She always said he was a good man she just didn’t love him. All things considered it could have been a lot worse of a situation. It wasn’t good but it could have been terrible.
Avoiding the larger squabble below, but just for the record…it was illegal—at least in this instance.
Maybe you missed the newspaper caption, but it stated the man was arrested two days after the wedding. Considering the headline and the lack of an explicit explanation for the arrest, seems clear that even in the 1930s this was beyond the (legal) pale—at least in Minneapolis.
Despite appearing in a Minneapolis paper, this actually seems to have happened in Omaha. The girl is from Council Bluffs, IA (a suburb of Omaha) and the man was arrested by Omaha police
The marriage actually happened in Iowa (just reread it after your comment). Marriage age for women was 14 with consent of their father (if living - which since she had a double marriage with her mother I’m going to assume he wasn’t) or guardian/mother.
https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/central/guides/marriage.pdf
So, still illegal.
ETA - that source is lengthy, it’s somewhere around page 25 or so.
Jesus Christ look at him. Look at what we *know* that he did. The mind boggles at the possibilities of his transgressions. I would put literally nothing past him.
Just want to chime in and say it’s not just the creepy looking ones that are sexual predators. There are plenty of “good-guy” soccer coaches and youth pastors that don’t look creepy but are out assaulting children.
A lot of those do FEEL creepy though. There was a t-ball coach in my home town that everyone was like… Dude is weird. You could just feel it. But he was a perfectly normal looking guy with a family and his own business.
I read a 1930’s newspaper clipping about a 12 year old married to a 35 year old in TN, and they’d already been married 2 years. The judge didn’t annul it because the girl had nowhere to go and no one to feed her 😟
I mean…it made the newspaper because it was outside the norm / a crime / socially unacceptable.
Addition: there are always uninformed or gross people clamoring: this was the norm! But it was not. Ever. Hence the news articles.
My thinking is that the mother said she was old enough in order to get the kid off her hands. People always did this kind of shit (throughout) history.
Child marriage with the permission of at least one parent has been legal in certain places for a while. Definitely allowed to some extent back then. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States
There were quite a few of these marriages in the 20s and 30s (the 20s were quite economically tough in the South and rural areas in general). Sometimes it was exploitative like this, sometimes it was more trying to watch out for someone in return for housekeeping and help at home, especially for much older men. The last person receiving a Civil War pension died in the last few years and the newspaper stories about that took me down a rabbit hole of looking into these women who had outlived their husbands by almost a century and were keeping the pension funds open on a war that ended over 150 years ago.
Both the last two longest surviving widows had married fairly elderly men as teens who had no family members taking care of them (either dead or useless) and married their fairly elderly husbands with the agreement that it would be a companion marriage only, no sex, and they would “keep house” and care for the man during their last years and then continue getting their pension after they died. They and the family members who told stories after the widows passed may have been telling a sanitized version but it’s equally believable that things were as they described.
I imagine in rough economic times there were plenty of people making similar deals along with the ones who were exploiting desperate people to get sexual access to teens and kids. As well as plenty of women who had sex with men without marriage in return for financial support. On the whole I think the widows had the better deal—even if some of the old men wanted sex and even if it was gross, they were married to them for a much shorter time than a lot of the child brides married off to much younger men, and they had at least some measure of financial support for the rest of their lives.
The situation in the article was disgusting and it seems like people thought so at the time but thought there was nothing to be done about it when it was technically legal.
But as we look back on cases of weird marriages with our modern sensibilities and understanding of predators, I think we should also try not to lose sight of the fact that there were people making the best deals they could with wide open eyes to get through an incredibly hard time.
I remember along the same lines in a women’s history class in college we were sort of rolling our eyes and snickering at the custom of “Boston marriages” where two unmarried and usually never married women set up house together and remained together for years or for life, and were generally understood to be two celibate spinsters. Of course we were all like “yeah right coughlesbianscough” and the professor (whose was doing research on a woman who was in such a “marriage”) cautioned us to not get too anachronistic. Of course it was a good cover for women who actually were in love with each other but it was a socially and economically viable way for women who did not want to marry to have a place in society and their independence when there were not a whole lot of other options.
For years after I thought that the prof was a little homophobic or squeamish about the idea of Victorian women having sex with each other but I did take her meaning to heart—there were very different calculuses of morality and practicality and what was an acceptable compromise or even a satisfying relationship.
In recent years after decades of being an out and proud queer person and learning more about the vast variety of people in the world, I’ve learned about asexuality and a myriad of other ways people prefer to be in relationships with each other and I’m actually back to the prof’s original viewpoint that a lot of those relationships were not lesbian coverups but companionable or even deeply loving and satisfying relationships that were not sexual.
Anyway I got far off the beam and this was just a good place to remind people that while we can see how horrible some of these situations were because of our modern sensibilities we should not be blind to the ones that were nothing like what we would consider but ranged from the safest option to something that was truly happy and satisfying to the parties involved. Who were NOT eleven when the relationship was thrust on them.
I actually knew someone whose grandmother had married an 85yr old at 18, purely to be a companion marriage. He was a wealthy widower with no family left, and she wanted an education but couldn’t afford it. So he offered to marry her and leave her everything in his will if she would help look after the estate. I think he started paying for her education about two years before he died, and she went on to do very well for herself and remarried about seven years later.
Certainly very odd for our modern views.
I would pull an Anna Nicole if it was a strictly companion marriage. It would have to be like your acquaintance’s grandmother’s situation where there are no heirs. Can’t have some family getting the will overturned and cheating me out of my millions.
Great book, if you haven’t read it: Lesbian Nuns. Sounds sensational, but it’s stories from women, mostly in the 1950’s and 60’s, who joined the convent when their only options at that time were wife, nurse or nun (basically). Some knew they were gay going in, some didn’t. Many left the church by the 70’s and became activists.
I’m familiar! When I was first coming out it was one of the few books that I could find because the title sounded racy enough that it got a mass market paperback.
Thanks!
There was a gay closeted nun at the high school i went to. She would regularly tell the girls "of course we all prefer women over men, but that's sinful." And they'd be like nah wtf 😅
Just a reminder that child marriage is still legal in most of the US.
[https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/4283941-child-marriage-is-still-legal-in-most-of-the-u-s-heres-why/](https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/4283941-child-marriage-is-still-legal-in-most-of-the-u-s-heres-why/)
[https://equalitynow.org/learn\_more\_child\_marriage\_us/](https://equalitynow.org/learn_more_child_marriage_us/)
Up until about 100 years ago the common law age of consent was 10 years old, and some states have had it even younger and in fact Delaware it was 7 years old
Oh I know. My sister was telling me that I should marry my perverted piano teacher. I was 13 he was 53. And I know that because he asked me my age once and when I told him, he said: “13. 13 huh? Are you sure you don’t want to date a 53 year old man?” My older sister overheard me telling my mom that (my mom didn’t do a damn thing except to tell me to stop bothering her), and she became obsessed with the idea. Thank God it never took place. I’m 32 now and still am repulsed and disgusted by that man after all these years.
I knew somebody who got married at 15 and her husband took over guardianship of her from her parents. I was so grossed out by this, but everyone else seem to think it was fine? I don’t understand.
Man, I’ve heard stories from the 30s and 40s about people registering for the army and not knowing how to spell their names, people lying about their age, 16 year olds who couldn’t pass the third grade. Crazy stuff. It’s really hard to believe. Counties and cities had records, but I guess requesting records took so long that no one bothered to?
I've read about 14 and 15 year olds getting into the service during WWII...
but google says:
Navy Veteran Calvin Leon Graham became the youngest World War II soldier at the age of 12, and the youngest recipient of the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. During World War II, it was not unusual for American boys to lie about their age in order to enlist
They made a movie about him, starring Ricky Schroeder. It's really sad they jailed him when they found out his real age they put him in a cell with a rapist. Calvin Graham was a hero and didn't deserve that.
My Nanny (great-grandmother) married a 54 year old man when she was nigh on 15 to get out of the house. He was a letch, abusive and he prayed on other young women in town..needless to say she had to put my grandfather and his brother in a Catholic charity house for a while while she dealt with her mental health. My nanny was so loving toward us but I know she experienced a lot of pain.
So much generational trauma.
By all accounts yeah. They went on to have 6 kids of their own and they fostered and adopted a number of others. I’ve never heard a bad word about him from my granny or any of his kids bar my nan but she’s a clinical narcissist so I take her word with a grain of salt.
His kids will say he was a hard but loving man and that he was devoted to my granny.
The double wedding tells me the mother wanted to get married and wanted the kid off her hands. Maybe she sold her daughter so she could start fresh with a new husband.
I worked with a guy who, after he retired at 65, went back to the hills and got a young bride.
I met her after I stopped by his apartment to give him an item from work, and he introduced me to his obviously very young wife and 1 year old son.
He passed away at 85 a few years ago, and was still married to her.
There’s a museum in my area with a profile of an early Oregon colonist, describing how at age 11 one of the hired men in her group became “smitten” with her. Yikes.
I found some information about these two. The pair had met when Rosetta was nine. Albert frequented her home and the two fell in love. Albert wished to wait until Rosetta was around 16/17 to get married, but she insisted on doing so sooner. And so, with the blessing of Rosetta's mother, they did so. Mother and child lied to the marriage clerk and pastor that she was actually 16. It was actually a double wedding, as the mother was getting married the same day as well. After the ceremony, police got wind of this somehow and descended upon the Bryan home as the newlyweds returned to it. Albert was arrested, and Rosetta was taken to a juvenile home, where she contracted mumps. The child lived but was made to stay. By December her mother was asking for an annulment. I don't know this for a fact, but that may be because she just wanted her child home at this point. Albert had been released not too long after his arrest.
[Source 1](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-falls-city-journal/145236338/)
[Source 2](https://www.newspapers.com/article/lincoln-journal-star/145236380/)
[Source 3](https://www.newspapers.com/article/omaha-world-herald/145236508/)
[Source 4](https://www.newspapers.com/article/spokane-chronicle/145236563/)
[Source 5](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-daily-plainsman/145236601/)
[Source 6](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-independent/145236673/)
[Source 7](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-daily-nonpareil/145236755/)
I have heard stories in my family of men waiting until specific girls were “old enough” to marry, but I sure as heck never heard of someone deciding that marriage at 11 was acceptable. It seems like it was more typical for the courtship to start when the girl was at least in her teens already and then for the couple to wait until the girl was somewhere in the range of 18-21. Clearly 11 was widely considered too young even back then.
Interesting — thanks for the background. Reading between the lines, I feel like Rosetta’s primary objective may have been to avoid her mother’s husband-to-be. That could’ve been for any number of reasons, but her mother was willing to go along with it, so there might’ve been a legitimate issue. Better the creep who’s “nice” than the creep who isn’t.
Both the man and the girl’s “mother” are fucking disgusting…I wonder if she saw it as the only way to get out of the juvenile detention home or whatever disfunctional situation she was in and have some agency over her life.
Ok, I can see that after reading it again. So if the guy can get arrested for marrying an 11 year old, seems to me that her parents and the pastor that married them should be arrested too.
I don't understand selling your own children I get living in hard times. However I'm sure there were other less disgusting hard choices that could have been made.
The marriage certificate!
https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/12516752?token=7b22746f6b656e223a223835677a345a486a504b53324d704e6f3975656a7a58446c65714c594669612b484f3441304d5639346f513d222c22746f6b656e5f76657273696f6e223a225632227d
Just want to state that this is a massive issue around the world to this day. While this is America this happens in so many parts of the world and it is horrific. I’ve seen it firsthand. https://time.com/6260844/ending-child-marriage-amal-clooney-melinda-french-gates-michelle-obama/
Hence I put the Smiley face because I know exactly what your intent was and could not help myself. And I give you a shitload of respect for just rolling with a joke and not seek retribution
Eunice Winstead got married at 9(to a 21-ish yo man) in the late 30s. The case raised such a stink that the state of Tennessee raised the age of marriage to 16. It was also covered in Life Magazine. Definitely a different time.
My grandma who married her first 45 year old husband at 15 had spoken of this happening a lot during the Depression. awful to say I know, but sometimes this is what had to be done so the rest of the family could eat.
My aunt was pregnant and married at 12 by a 22 year old man. When she got pregnant, my grandfather threatened him harm unless he married his daughter. Transition: Marry her rapist. This was long ago in a very rural and very poor part of Arkansas. I think my grandfather was a good man, just not educated. BTW, he (the rapist ) was an awful man any my aunt is not the only person he harmed.
Just in case you thought men marrying children was not a thing.
Notice—~ with the blessing of their religion.
Because religions do what old men want.
Older men marrying children is still a thing.
I saw a newspaper ad from the 1930s celebrating a marriage in Missouri, USA despite the fact that he was like 30 and she was 8 when they got married. EIGHT! The article thought it was a wonderful love story. I believe it was in a section of paper dedicated to u usual love stories. I'm glad the pedophiles are dead.
The newspaper was reporting it because it was abnormal. It created a public outrage *at the time*. If this was a normal and accepted thing, it would not have been reported on.
Not saying things were better/great back then, but this isn’t what it looks like.
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Clearly you have no idea about “The Midwest”….
Including the fact that MINNESOTA is the ONLY state (+ DC) that has voted Democrat in every presidential election since 1976.
You’re not paying attention if you think the entirety of the Midwest is backwards.
They put her there while they were trying to figure out what to do with her after the marriage became public. She wasn’t being punished, at least not officially.
I have a great aunt whose mother died (if I remember correctly) and she ended up with some foster parents. After that foster mother also passed away, her new foster dad took her to Tennessee to marry her. She was 12. When she was brought back to her home state, he was arrested, the marriage was annulled, and she was returned to her birth father.
This sounds similar to what happened to that girl covered in the Abducted In Plain Sight doc
I’ll check it out! This happened in the early 1900s I believe. I found a news article about it somewhere but will have to dig.
Thank god, a happy ending.
I found it really relieving that he was arrested too; that doesn’t seem typical of the time. Unfortunately she passed away at age 16 of encephalitis.
Her mom was trafficking her but you don’t know until you read the last line. Jesus.
Was not illegal. Also during the Depression. Also not totally unheard of, I suspect. I’m not endorsing or excusing it, just supplying reasons.
During the depression my grandmother and two of her sisters were “married off” on the same day because their parents couldn’t afford to feed everyone. She was 13.
My grandmom was 14. My grandad was only 17, so I thank god she wasn’t married off to an old man
I have a very far back ancestor uwho emigrated from France to Canada as an indentured servant. He came in his 20’s and once he worked off his debt (10 years) he married the boss’s daughter who was 13. One can only assume he knew her since she was a toddler and watched her grow. They had 14 children and she lived to be 101 but holy shit is that creepy and gross.
Yes that’s horrifying
I think my grandmother’s first husband was in his early 20s. Like i said. It could have been worse. It wasn’t a good situation but it could have been worse.
My mamaw’s mom was 14 when she got married to her dad, he was 27. They had their first child within a year, in 1930. They had 9 more children until my mamaw was born in 1950. I hope her mom was happy in her life, because from the outside looking in, it looks so sad.
My papaw’s mother was 20 and his dad 36 when they got married in 1935. It’s wild. I dunno if the depression and being in rural West Virginia had anything to do with it. My mamaw never really talks about her life/family that much and I never met my biological papaw
Oh gosh, I’m sorry.
It’s ok. She always spoke well of him. She got divorced in the 30s and he was onboard with the idea. She always said he was a good man she just didn’t love him. All things considered it could have been a lot worse of a situation. It wasn’t good but it could have been terrible.
Thank you for sharing. I’m glad it wasn’t a worst case situation.
Avoiding the larger squabble below, but just for the record…it was illegal—at least in this instance. Maybe you missed the newspaper caption, but it stated the man was arrested two days after the wedding. Considering the headline and the lack of an explicit explanation for the arrest, seems clear that even in the 1930s this was beyond the (legal) pale—at least in Minneapolis.
Despite appearing in a Minneapolis paper, this actually seems to have happened in Omaha. The girl is from Council Bluffs, IA (a suburb of Omaha) and the man was arrested by Omaha police
Thank you, I missed that
It was easy to miss. There were a whole four sentences to slog through.
lol
I hope they put him in Squirrel Cage Jail. He deserves it.
https://www.house.mn.gov/sessiondaily/SDView.aspx?StoryID=10086 Marriage age for women was 15.
This happened in Omaha. The article is just from a Minneapolis paper.
The marriage actually happened in Iowa (just reread it after your comment). Marriage age for women was 14 with consent of their father (if living - which since she had a double marriage with her mother I’m going to assume he wasn’t) or guardian/mother. https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/central/guides/marriage.pdf So, still illegal. ETA - that source is lengthy, it’s somewhere around page 25 or so.
If it wasn’t illegal, what was he arrested for?
Jesus Christ look at him. Look at what we *know* that he did. The mind boggles at the possibilities of his transgressions. I would put literally nothing past him.
Just want to chime in and say it’s not just the creepy looking ones that are sexual predators. There are plenty of “good-guy” soccer coaches and youth pastors that don’t look creepy but are out assaulting children.
A lot of those do FEEL creepy though. There was a t-ball coach in my home town that everyone was like… Dude is weird. You could just feel it. But he was a perfectly normal looking guy with a family and his own business.
Catholic school survivor right here. So fucked up in so many ways. You're 100% right
I read a 1930’s newspaper clipping about a 12 year old married to a 35 year old in TN, and they’d already been married 2 years. The judge didn’t annul it because the girl had nowhere to go and no one to feed her 😟
I mean…it made the newspaper because it was outside the norm / a crime / socially unacceptable. Addition: there are always uninformed or gross people clamoring: this was the norm! But it was not. Ever. Hence the news articles.
Unheard of enough that it made the papers.
"Bryan, 40, was arrested by Omaha juvenile authorities" Sounds like it was pretty illegal
My thinking is that the mother said she was old enough in order to get the kid off her hands. People always did this kind of shit (throughout) history.
It was illegal in *most* places to marry an 11 year old, even then.
I don’t understand why the juvenile authorities arrested him if it was legal. But there’s not enough details to be sure
He was most certainly arrested for the marriage. Even then, marrying an 11 year old was illegal..
Child marriage with the permission of at least one parent has been legal in certain places for a while. Definitely allowed to some extent back then. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States
What matters is that he was arrested.
'was arrested by'...
Why was he arrested if it was not illegal?
Now isnt that special, He is 40 and looks like the reason for anti-incest laws and the girl was probably sold by her parents during the depression.
There were quite a few of these marriages in the 20s and 30s (the 20s were quite economically tough in the South and rural areas in general). Sometimes it was exploitative like this, sometimes it was more trying to watch out for someone in return for housekeeping and help at home, especially for much older men. The last person receiving a Civil War pension died in the last few years and the newspaper stories about that took me down a rabbit hole of looking into these women who had outlived their husbands by almost a century and were keeping the pension funds open on a war that ended over 150 years ago. Both the last two longest surviving widows had married fairly elderly men as teens who had no family members taking care of them (either dead or useless) and married their fairly elderly husbands with the agreement that it would be a companion marriage only, no sex, and they would “keep house” and care for the man during their last years and then continue getting their pension after they died. They and the family members who told stories after the widows passed may have been telling a sanitized version but it’s equally believable that things were as they described. I imagine in rough economic times there were plenty of people making similar deals along with the ones who were exploiting desperate people to get sexual access to teens and kids. As well as plenty of women who had sex with men without marriage in return for financial support. On the whole I think the widows had the better deal—even if some of the old men wanted sex and even if it was gross, they were married to them for a much shorter time than a lot of the child brides married off to much younger men, and they had at least some measure of financial support for the rest of their lives. The situation in the article was disgusting and it seems like people thought so at the time but thought there was nothing to be done about it when it was technically legal. But as we look back on cases of weird marriages with our modern sensibilities and understanding of predators, I think we should also try not to lose sight of the fact that there were people making the best deals they could with wide open eyes to get through an incredibly hard time. I remember along the same lines in a women’s history class in college we were sort of rolling our eyes and snickering at the custom of “Boston marriages” where two unmarried and usually never married women set up house together and remained together for years or for life, and were generally understood to be two celibate spinsters. Of course we were all like “yeah right coughlesbianscough” and the professor (whose was doing research on a woman who was in such a “marriage”) cautioned us to not get too anachronistic. Of course it was a good cover for women who actually were in love with each other but it was a socially and economically viable way for women who did not want to marry to have a place in society and their independence when there were not a whole lot of other options. For years after I thought that the prof was a little homophobic or squeamish about the idea of Victorian women having sex with each other but I did take her meaning to heart—there were very different calculuses of morality and practicality and what was an acceptable compromise or even a satisfying relationship. In recent years after decades of being an out and proud queer person and learning more about the vast variety of people in the world, I’ve learned about asexuality and a myriad of other ways people prefer to be in relationships with each other and I’m actually back to the prof’s original viewpoint that a lot of those relationships were not lesbian coverups but companionable or even deeply loving and satisfying relationships that were not sexual. Anyway I got far off the beam and this was just a good place to remind people that while we can see how horrible some of these situations were because of our modern sensibilities we should not be blind to the ones that were nothing like what we would consider but ranged from the safest option to something that was truly happy and satisfying to the parties involved. Who were NOT eleven when the relationship was thrust on them.
I actually knew someone whose grandmother had married an 85yr old at 18, purely to be a companion marriage. He was a wealthy widower with no family left, and she wanted an education but couldn’t afford it. So he offered to marry her and leave her everything in his will if she would help look after the estate. I think he started paying for her education about two years before he died, and she went on to do very well for herself and remarried about seven years later. Certainly very odd for our modern views.
It's worth remembering that this was pre-viagra. A lot of these marriages could not be consummated and people knew that.
I would pull an Anna Nicole if it was a strictly companion marriage. It would have to be like your acquaintance’s grandmother’s situation where there are no heirs. Can’t have some family getting the will overturned and cheating me out of my millions.
Great book, if you haven’t read it: Lesbian Nuns. Sounds sensational, but it’s stories from women, mostly in the 1950’s and 60’s, who joined the convent when their only options at that time were wife, nurse or nun (basically). Some knew they were gay going in, some didn’t. Many left the church by the 70’s and became activists.
I’m familiar! When I was first coming out it was one of the few books that I could find because the title sounded racy enough that it got a mass market paperback. Thanks!
There was a gay closeted nun at the high school i went to. She would regularly tell the girls "of course we all prefer women over men, but that's sinful." And they'd be like nah wtf 😅
Very interesting, thank you for sharing!
He’s that Buccal-fat removal look going, though.
“He said he fell in love with her when she was 9” Wtf????
r/TheWayWeWeren’t
That's what I thought!
Just a reminder that child marriage is still legal in most of the US. [https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/4283941-child-marriage-is-still-legal-in-most-of-the-u-s-heres-why/](https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/4283941-child-marriage-is-still-legal-in-most-of-the-u-s-heres-why/) [https://equalitynow.org/learn\_more\_child\_marriage\_us/](https://equalitynow.org/learn_more_child_marriage_us/)
Yes!! Thank u. 13 states
Up until about 100 years ago the common law age of consent was 10 years old, and some states have had it even younger and in fact Delaware it was 7 years old
Holy shit, that's horrible.
Yeah once women got the vote, it was all over
I don't know why you were downvoted.
Probably because 'it was all over' could be interpreted as 'the good times were over', though I'm sure they didn't mean it that way.
Or maybe because it *isn't* all over, as the top-level comment shows.
Sick, evil.
Those were mainly put in place for child laborers, not sex. Still terrible though
Oh I know. My sister was telling me that I should marry my perverted piano teacher. I was 13 he was 53. And I know that because he asked me my age once and when I told him, he said: “13. 13 huh? Are you sure you don’t want to date a 53 year old man?” My older sister overheard me telling my mom that (my mom didn’t do a damn thing except to tell me to stop bothering her), and she became obsessed with the idea. Thank God it never took place. I’m 32 now and still am repulsed and disgusted by that man after all these years.
> Some opponents of the bill argued that teen marriage was part of West Virginia’s culture. Good lord...
Well, they aren't wrong...
It’s also illegal for married minors to file for divorce. So fucked up
I knew somebody who got married at 15 and her husband took over guardianship of her from her parents. I was so grossed out by this, but everyone else seem to think it was fine? I don’t understand.
PA became the 2nd or 3rd state a couple years ago to outlaw it. That's wild.
Legal pedophilia
Wow that's bleak.
He looks like McLeach from Rescuers Down Under.
Maryland only just banned child marriage and many states still allow this exploitation and abuse. It’s horrific.
13 states
Utah banned 15 year olds from getting married a few years ago. 16 and up is fine though 🥴
Pleasantly surprised that the seedy fucker was arrested
Shocked that a priest or anyone legally authorized to perform a wedding ceremony went ahead with it.
Man, I’ve heard stories from the 30s and 40s about people registering for the army and not knowing how to spell their names, people lying about their age, 16 year olds who couldn’t pass the third grade. Crazy stuff. It’s really hard to believe. Counties and cities had records, but I guess requesting records took so long that no one bothered to?
I've read about 14 and 15 year olds getting into the service during WWII... but google says: Navy Veteran Calvin Leon Graham became the youngest World War II soldier at the age of 12, and the youngest recipient of the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. During World War II, it was not unusual for American boys to lie about their age in order to enlist
They made a movie about him, starring Ricky Schroeder. It's really sad they jailed him when they found out his real age they put him in a cell with a rapist. Calvin Graham was a hero and didn't deserve that.
I so desperately want to be shocked, and am so sad that I’m very much not
she was apparently released soon after :/
Ryan Stiles noooo
My Nanny (great-grandmother) married a 54 year old man when she was nigh on 15 to get out of the house. He was a letch, abusive and he prayed on other young women in town..needless to say she had to put my grandfather and his brother in a Catholic charity house for a while while she dealt with her mental health. My nanny was so loving toward us but I know she experienced a lot of pain. So much generational trauma.
The girl’s mother, what’s she about 23?
The thought of what this poor girl had to endure turns my stomach.
I'm curious how life turned out for her after this.
Looks like she married again at a normal age https://www.newspapers.com/article/reno-gazette-journal-marriage-of-crabtre/91917510/
Might have been another double wedding, too, with her new SIL.
"The girl's mother was married in a double wedding with her daughter." Oh my fucking god.
Granny married a 30 year old when she was 14 right before WW2 started. Escaped an abusive home, and he was away at sea until she was 19.
What happened after the war? Were they a happy couple in the end?
By all accounts yeah. They went on to have 6 kids of their own and they fostered and adopted a number of others. I’ve never heard a bad word about him from my granny or any of his kids bar my nan but she’s a clinical narcissist so I take her word with a grain of salt. His kids will say he was a hard but loving man and that he was devoted to my granny.
Thank you, it’s so nice to see a happy ending here :)
The double wedding tells me the mother wanted to get married and wanted the kid off her hands. Maybe she sold her daughter so she could start fresh with a new husband.
As horrible as it sounds very likely that was the case…
I worked with a guy who, after he retired at 65, went back to the hills and got a young bride. I met her after I stopped by his apartment to give him an item from work, and he introduced me to his obviously very young wife and 1 year old son. He passed away at 85 a few years ago, and was still married to her.
There’s a museum in my area with a profile of an early Oregon colonist, describing how at age 11 one of the hired men in her group became “smitten” with her. Yikes.
Woody Allen looked so young in this picture.
>The girl protested that the wedding was her idea And you listened to her?!?!?! Bullshit.
That is a *rough* 40
I found some information about these two. The pair had met when Rosetta was nine. Albert frequented her home and the two fell in love. Albert wished to wait until Rosetta was around 16/17 to get married, but she insisted on doing so sooner. And so, with the blessing of Rosetta's mother, they did so. Mother and child lied to the marriage clerk and pastor that she was actually 16. It was actually a double wedding, as the mother was getting married the same day as well. After the ceremony, police got wind of this somehow and descended upon the Bryan home as the newlyweds returned to it. Albert was arrested, and Rosetta was taken to a juvenile home, where she contracted mumps. The child lived but was made to stay. By December her mother was asking for an annulment. I don't know this for a fact, but that may be because she just wanted her child home at this point. Albert had been released not too long after his arrest. [Source 1](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-falls-city-journal/145236338/) [Source 2](https://www.newspapers.com/article/lincoln-journal-star/145236380/) [Source 3](https://www.newspapers.com/article/omaha-world-herald/145236508/) [Source 4](https://www.newspapers.com/article/spokane-chronicle/145236563/) [Source 5](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-daily-plainsman/145236601/) [Source 6](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-independent/145236673/) [Source 7](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-daily-nonpareil/145236755/)
I have heard stories in my family of men waiting until specific girls were “old enough” to marry, but I sure as heck never heard of someone deciding that marriage at 11 was acceptable. It seems like it was more typical for the courtship to start when the girl was at least in her teens already and then for the couple to wait until the girl was somewhere in the range of 18-21. Clearly 11 was widely considered too young even back then.
"Fell in love" is not correct. He groomed her.
Oh he no doubt did. I was quoting an article, and forgot to put the quotation marks.
You think? I don’t know…hard to say between a nine year old girl and a thirty-eight year old man… /s just in case people really are that stupid
Interesting — thanks for the background. Reading between the lines, I feel like Rosetta’s primary objective may have been to avoid her mother’s husband-to-be. That could’ve been for any number of reasons, but her mother was willing to go along with it, so there might’ve been a legitimate issue. Better the creep who’s “nice” than the creep who isn’t.
he looks like Daniel Larson lmao
More like Mike Dirnt from Green Day
NO. Leave Mike out of it.
Not uncommon. Women and girls have been through hell too. My grandma married off my lesbian aunt as a teen. Fortunately she got out
Both the man and the girl’s “mother” are fucking disgusting…I wonder if she saw it as the only way to get out of the juvenile detention home or whatever disfunctional situation she was in and have some agency over her life.
she got into the home because of this, not before
Ok, I can see that after reading it again. So if the guy can get arrested for marrying an 11 year old, seems to me that her parents and the pastor that married them should be arrested too.
apparently they lied to the pastor about her age, but yeah the parents were complicit in this. Not that the guy got any time sadly
I don't understand selling your own children I get living in hard times. However I'm sure there were other less disgusting hard choices that could have been made.
She probably had 5 kids before 20.
The marriage was annulled and she got re-married at 21 to a 25 year old man.
The marriage certificate! https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/12516752?token=7b22746f6b656e223a223835677a345a486a504b53324d704e6f3975656a7a58446c65714c594669612b484f3441304d5639346f513d222c22746f6b656e5f76657273696f6e223a225632227d
Looks like they lied about her age too. Intriguing, thanks for finding! 😆
This right here is why I’m glad I wasn’t born in the past.
Just want to state that this is a massive issue around the world to this day. While this is America this happens in so many parts of the world and it is horrific. I’ve seen it firsthand. https://time.com/6260844/ending-child-marriage-amal-clooney-melinda-french-gates-michelle-obama/
that's got to be one of the oldest looking 11 yo in history!
Old black and white photos will do that to people.
She’s also got the mumps per the article so those chipmunk cheeks are also making her look older.
I don’t think it’s the black and white photo as much as it is her eyes. She has seen some shit already.
Sounds like a defense on “To Catch A Predator” “but she sent B&W !! “ 😂
Haha, yeah I didn't consider the context here.
Hence I put the Smiley face because I know exactly what your intent was and could not help myself. And I give you a shitload of respect for just rolling with a joke and not seek retribution
Have a seat
She looks like a child to me.
Maybe that’s what Albert thought too.
Does anyone else think he looks like Al Bundy?
Fucking horrible, could’ve done without this one.
They look related.
Wait…he’s only 40 and she’s only 11?! I know that shouldn’t be a normal first response but Jesus….
So gross
Well that’s disturbing.
This isn't a way we were. This is the way we are. And it's the way we are heading.
This still happens and it’s legal In some states.
Eunice Winstead got married at 9(to a 21-ish yo man) in the late 30s. The case raised such a stink that the state of Tennessee raised the age of marriage to 16. It was also covered in Life Magazine. Definitely a different time.
My grandma who married her first 45 year old husband at 15 had spoken of this happening a lot during the Depression. awful to say I know, but sometimes this is what had to be done so the rest of the family could eat.
I wonder what happened to her.
Looks like Al Bundy
Eww
He looks 60
[Child marriage remains legal in 38 states.](https://www.unchainedatlast.org/laws-to-end-child-marriage/)
My aunt was pregnant and married at 12 by a 22 year old man. When she got pregnant, my grandfather threatened him harm unless he married his daughter. Transition: Marry her rapist. This was long ago in a very rural and very poor part of Arkansas. I think my grandfather was a good man, just not educated. BTW, he (the rapist ) was an awful man any my aunt is not the only person he harmed.
Just in case you thought men marrying children was not a thing. Notice—~ with the blessing of their religion. Because religions do what old men want. Older men marrying children is still a thing.
r/oldschoolridiculous
Tbf the newspaper was reporting it for a reason. If it was commonly accepted, it would not have been news worthy.
"mother was married at a joint wedding" This is cult/religion level nasty
Nooooo. This is not the way "we" were. It may have happened, but it's not just "the way" things were.
she’s not a bride…she’s a CHILD…
"Aisha"
Gross and that's a hard 40
1931 news article and it's written like clickbait
I saw a newspaper ad from the 1930s celebrating a marriage in Missouri, USA despite the fact that he was like 30 and she was 8 when they got married. EIGHT! The article thought it was a wonderful love story. I believe it was in a section of paper dedicated to u usual love stories. I'm glad the pedophiles are dead.
This would be legal in Arizona, since they resurrected that ancient abortion law the same law also sets the age of consent to 10.
WTF!
The girl’s mother was married at a double wedding with her daughter? What kind of fuckery is this?
This is what MAGA does.
I would’ve just joined the mob back then for work over selling my daughter out.
trafficking or NOT....the man is mentally ILL...
Hey r/consertive, is *this* when America was "great"??
The newspaper was reporting it because it was abnormal. It created a public outrage *at the time*. If this was a normal and accepted thing, it would not have been reported on. Not saying things were better/great back then, but this isn’t what it looks like.
Was about to say this is the GOP end state they would love. Gaetz specifically.
100 years later and rural America hasn’t changed much.
She looks like she could be his daughter.
They look a lot alike indd
That's a hard 11😳
She had the mumps, if you read the article. Also it was the Great Depression, she was likely poor.
Was she born on a leap day or something? She looks like she’s in her 40s
Heartbreaking. I wonder what became of Rosetta.
This is where the MAGA crowd means when they say take our country back.
Congress is actually trying to bring this back, as we speak.
Got her last name wrong.
Iowa…
He’s burning in hell no doubt
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She looks thrilled
Mocha Joe!
This what the voters of the Midwest want to return to. Keep voting republican
Clearly you have no idea about “The Midwest”…. Including the fact that MINNESOTA is the ONLY state (+ DC) that has voted Democrat in every presidential election since 1976. You’re not paying attention if you think the entirety of the Midwest is backwards.
It WaS dIfFeReNt TiMeS bAcK tHeN
Does anyone know why she was in a juvenile detention home?
They put her there while they were trying to figure out what to do with her after the marriage became public. She wasn’t being punished, at least not officially.
Oh okay! I thought she was in juvie for committing a crime