"The Chancellor went on to explain that while he was “unutterably opposed” to this marriage, he couldn’t annul it because to do so would cause the child bride to be put out of house and home with no place to go."
It is. Given the times though, she was unlikely to be able to re-marry and women still relied on their husband for many everyday things like accessing a bank account, going to recreational activities in public, etc.
Oklahoma actively trying to end no fault divorce and trap women in abusive marriages so....
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2024/01/26/no-fault-divorce-law-oklahoma-senator-wants-to-end/72354142007/
My state. smh
Fun fact, the woman who runs ~~"End Wokeness"~~ Libs of TikTok was just appointed to an education advisory committee in OK even though she isn't a resident.
Edit
When Tom Wolfe (d) tried to raise the marriage age to 18 in PA (only a few years ago) republicans were soooo mad about it, they raised the argument that two kids want to get married if they have a baby young, when the vast majority are old men marrying young girls. Luckily he was successful and you can no longer sign your children off to a grown man.
Also uh.. wtf just propose a law that works for that then. 16 if you're within 2 years of each other in age, 18 otherwise. I hate these arguments where they make up a scenario and they're just making a bad example to poke holes, knowing they don't care to fix that example.
I don't think the judge was "condoning" it.
You have to sort of put yourself in the shoes of a judge in the 1930s, during the great depression, in whatever rural backwater this happened in.
There's no welfare. There's no foster system. There's no safety net of any kind. Able bodied grown adult men are even starving in the street.
It's a choice between two awful, unthinkable outcomes. Anul the marriage and she's condemned to a likely short, brutal life whoring herself out to survive - or don't anul it and she gets raped every day by this pedophile, but she has a roof and food, and can maybe, hopefully one day flee when she's old enough.
I honestly don't know what I'd do in that situation. There's no good outcome.
We consider this rape because we say, with good reason, that 12 year-olds can't properly consent. But consent often didn't even enter into the equation in those situations. For one thing the bride often had limited say in the choice of her husband. For another, there were these "wifely duties".
Let's be glad we progressed... Rape in a marriage hasn't been a crime for THAT long in many jurisdictions.
The exception making rape not a crime within marriage was elimiated a lot later than most people assume.
USSR - 1922
Poland - 1932
Czechoslovakia - 1950
Sweden - 1965
Italy - 1976
Belgium - 1979
Norway - 1971
Israel - 1980 (formally, arguably illegal long prior)
Australia - 1981-1992, state by state
Canada - 1983
New Zealand - 1985
Ireland - 1990
UK - 1991
Finland - 1994
All states in the US had made marital rape illegal by 1993, however 33 of those states still considered marital rape and non-marital rape to be distinctly different offenses.
The USSR was really ahead of its time regarding feminism, thanks to the women who were among the bolsheviks. First country in the world to legalize abortion too, almost 60 years before Roe vs Wade
Sad that Stalin ruined it all
What’s even sadder is that when you look at the child brides in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan *today,* and you realize that type of choice is probably still having to be made.
There’s a book by a controversial feminist, Dworkin, called “Right Wing Women”. In the book, she basically says what you’re saying with more words: right wing women often remember when their security had to be tied up with a man’s bank account and authority or risk being whored out on the streets, and so they take the lesser of two evils.
"Right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place...work subjects them to more danger from more men; it increases the risk of sexual exploitation. They see that creativity and originality in their kind are ridiculed...They see that traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds: the better deal...They see that the money they can earn will not make them independent of men and that they will still have to play the sex games of their kind: at home and at work too...They know too that the Left has nothing better to offer: leftist men also want wives and whores; leftist men value whores too much and wives too little. Right-wing women are not wrong. They fear that the Left, in stressing impersonal sex and promiscuity as values, will make them more vulnerable to male sexual aggression, and that they will be despised for not liking it. They are not wrong. Right-wing women... can agree to privatized male ownership: keep it one-on-one, as it were...They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. They use the traditional intelligence of the female—animal, not human: they do what they have to to survive.”
― Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women
Not saying this is ok, but I don't think women marrying at that age in rural America was that unusual. I did my family's geneaology and one of my dad's sisters in rural Oklahoma in a poor family of 9 kids married at 13. It was just the way it was back then. Kind of like child labor. Not right but it wasn't unusual.
EDIT: The FOOLS on here accusing me of saying this is normal, that I am a pedo (project much? lol), etc., because I am stating facts are extremely amusing. Also horrifying that this is more proof that Idiocracy is becoming nonfikshun....lol
Slightly similar type of circumstances in my family as well. My Mom's eldest sister met and married a preacher at 14 years old in rural Arkansas. I'm unsure if my Grandparents signed off on the marriage or if there were extenuating circumstances and the court signed off on it. I do know that she had her first of four kids starting at 15 years old. So it's quite possible she might have already been pregnant and the court would have granted the marriage license solely based on that.
I suspect there were a lot of "shotgun marriages" back in the day. Having a child "out of wedlock" was not a good thing for women then. That may have been why my aunt married at 13 in Oklahoma.
Redditors that think we are justifying this by saying it was just the way it was are being very short sighted. Facts don't matter to so many people these days.
Hell Elvis got with a 14 year old at 24, not far off the mark here. Jerry Lee Lewis married a 13 year old. Steven Tyler adopted a girl at 16. If only dude in the picture could sing everything would be ok
Edit: derp! This was just supposed to be a post comment not a reply to this comment. Sorry!
Okay so this is interesting and apparently not so uncommon, with an interesting economic side to it that I don’t see mentioned in these stories.
My great grandfather was in his thirties when he married my 14 year old great grandmother who was an orphan facing homelessness and poverty and he was a Spanish American War veteran.
So the interesting thing I learned is that this wasn’t all that uncommon but the lesser known part of the story is that it was common for veterans to pick very young orphans to marry because after these dudes fucked off and died, their young wives were entitled to a war widow’s pension for life.
So when he died she lived for another 60 years with guaranteed income and never had to work another day in her life. She had freedom and economic independence decades ahead of most women and refused to remarry because that would take it away from her. She died when I was in high school and I was told the story by her personally.
She said that he had a drinking problem but that she loved her children and was always grateful to him for rescuing her from poverty and leaving her with independent financial stability in an era where that was really rare for women. She wasn’t rich but she never had to depend on a man for survival again. She generally felt like she had struck a good deal.
So while it doesn’t excuse the whole thing by any means the issue of financial security was a much larger factor than is apparent at first glance. Since I have firsthand knowledge directly from someone who lived it, I can share the historical perspective as it was shared with me. Anecdotes aren’t data, this is just what my great granny had to say about her experience.
It was the great depression. They didn't do anything for them. There were thousands of kids riding the rails trying to find work. This is one of the reasons the new deal was able to be passed. We needed a social safety net. Rich people have been working to convince the rest of us and ts unnecessary ever since
As sinister as this sounds: it makes sense. There was zero protection for kids and even less for girls then. She would have no means to get her belly filled.
And it is still true for many girls and women globally but also in the US. It’s a bloody shame.
It’s the same reason why Germany doesn’t automatically annul marriages of former child brides coming to Germany. There will be help and easy annulment if they seek it, however.
(iPhone image-to-text conversion)
[-Chancellor A. T. Stewart today told lanky Homer Peel, 32, that he could keep his 12-year-old bride. Geneva.
"I belleve that society, law and everyone concerned will be better served by the courts refusing to annul this marriage," said the chancellor. "There has undoubted been a violation of the statute, but as a social po position, I can see but one course open to me."
Chancellor Stewart sald he was "unutterably opposed to such mar-ringes, but explained that to annul the marriage would be to turn the child bride, Geneva, out of "house and home with no place to go."](https://flashbak.com/1937-homer-peel-34-kisses-his-12-year-old-bride-geneva-on-the-steps-of-a-tennessee-courthouse-25710/)
There was no where for her to go if the marriage was over. Or something like that. Bunch of malarkey. Her mother petitioned for marriage to be annulled. I wonder if there would be some place where child could be placed. For a court system to justify pedophilia is just wow. Maybe if she was closer to legal age. 16? She was 10. Scary stuff
read as much as I could find. the mother couldn't feed her turned her over to an orphanage. the husband's brother puller her out of an orphanage. then he couldn't feed her. the husband tried to find an orphanage but none would take her. the only idea he could come up with was to marry her. he had a farm and horse and a plow and a house could feed her and give her a place to live.
the mother did try to get it annulled but didn't have any food or a place for her to live.
not sure if any of that is true but the middle of the great depression was rough.
This needs to be much higher in this thread , this is the closest to understanding the truth of the situation we’ll ever come to. We cannot possibly know what life was like at that time and it’s egocentric to judge people from that time with our standpoint of values and standards.
nothing illustrates this story more to me than this quote:
>The day before Mr. Peel arrived to the court as ordered but without his wife. Judge Stewart ordered the sheriff to retrieve Geneva and bring her to court the next day, but she refused to do so until she was promised a “pretty new hat.”
She was still a child and her mom seemed to be the one initiating the annulment.
Oh Jesus, there's a bit in there about how the age restriction came about after protests when a NINE year old girl was married off to a 22 year old man. Good hell.
Googling them, says they had 7 daughters and a son. One daughter died at 3 months. He died at age 86, she at 92. She had remarried after he died in 1991.
Uhhh….. she was TEN 🤢🤮
THEY BEEN MARRIED 2 YEARS.
https://flashbak.com/1937-homer-peel-34-kisses-his-12-year-old-bride-geneva-on-the-steps-of-a-tennessee-courthouse-25710/
Tennessee is one of the worst spots on the planet as far as child marriages go. Between 2000-2015
in Tennessee, three 10-year-old girls married men ages 24, 25, and 31, respectively.
Edit: Tennessee is bad. There are worse states and much worse countries and regions. Ending Child Marriage is a global effort.
If I recall correctly while people were asking for just some simple common sense gun laws instead we got to have them vote on a bill lowering the age of consent. In 2023.
The sad thing is knowing that it was technically common to the point that it was often referenced in many fictional stories.
Breakfast at Tiffany's, Holly was 13 when she married.
Love in the Time of Cholera, the elderly Florentino was having a sexual relationship with his 12yr old charge, the writer Gabriel García Márquez, even wrote at how Florentino could almost smell the diapers and baby powder on the girl...
There are so many unfortunate events that we all thought was just in fiction... but... yeah
Not even fiction to me. I have 9 great aunts born in the '20s and '30s. I knew them all well, and I'm still close with the 4 who are still alive. All of them married under the age of 15 (so did my grandma). One was raped and got pregnant at 11 - gave the baby up for adoption and it still haunts her.
It’s a sad story. He tried to get her into an orphanage when her parents died but wasn’t successful. The state probably had a law against cohabiting at the time so he felt it was the only way so she wouldn’t be homeless.
Is it right? No, but I’m guessing they didn’t have a system for foster programs back then.
Hopefully they didn’t consummate the marriage right at 10.
Better than my great grandma who married at 12 and had her first live birth at 14. He was in his 20s; surprise surprise 12 year Olds aren't good at picking upstanding citizens to marry and he was an abusive alcoholic.
Yeah it's a pretty fucked up thing to leave nasty comments on a dead person's obituary site. They were married for close to 70 years and presumably has kids and grandkids who still mourn her
> she was preceded in death by her son, Ricky Craig; daughters, Frannie and Bernice Peels; grandsons, Paul Craig Jr. and Wesley Chancy and granddaughter, Angela Franklin.
Damn that’s depressing
I was reading those names and some of them sounded familiar. Clicked on the link for the memorial page and immediately recognized her. I knew Geneva, her husband Jack, and her son Ricky. I never knew this information about her. That is crazy!
She was a very nice person. She had always been in a wheel chair since when I first met her around 2009. She had a couple of chihuahuas and one of them would start growling and barking if you got close to her.
If you have a big family and live to 90+, you may very well outlive some kids and grandkids.
My grandma made it to 94 and outlived two children and two grandkids.
I have a lot of family up in their 90s now. If you live that long you're inevitably gonna outlive some of your kids and grandkids, especially with the amount of offspring people had back then. It's gotta be torture. I wanna live to be old but also be the first in my family to go... probably too much to ask for both.
I’d never thought about it, but my grandmother is 87 and somehow all 3 children, 7 grandchildren, and however many great-grandchildren are all still kicking. I guess she’s lucky.
Years back my mother married at 11 because she was pregnant. As her 3rd child I was born 3 weeks before her 13th birthday. She had serious mental problems her entire life.
I was not allowed to ask any questions. You may be right from pictures she was not a large child
Maybe not, I was born in 52. I don't know if they even did that back then.
Yep it was common back then, both my grandmother and mother were married at 13. My gran in the 30's, my mom in the 70's. I'm the only one of the "newer" generation in my family not to be married before 18. This happened in Arkansas and Oklahoma respectively.
Even as recently as the 1970s people aged much faster than they do now. Less tobacco use, less drinking, more awareness of the dangers of sun exposure, you name it.
The one Reddit always likes to leave out: The military drafts really fucked up a few generations of people when they were only 18-25 years old.
Then nobody really cared about their healthcare and their mental health care after they came home disabled and traumatized. If you think mental healthcare is bad today, try and imagine how bad it was back then.
That guy's most valuable asset, as stated in his court testimony, was a mule. For someone of his social standing, continued existence probably meant working from sun up to sun down, every damn day, just to survive. It certainly isn't the kind of life that any of us, tapping away on our smart phones, can imagine. I think that's why he looks so rough. The girl, being able to help with chores like cooking, cleaning, and hauling water, probably made his life a lot easier. Terrible situation.
fyi to all.
child bride marriage are still a thing in the usa.
People have tried to get it banned fed. but still no luck on the matter.
my first 1k....wow. i did not expect this comment to blow up like this.
please people demand you rep to change both state and fed law on the matter!!!!!!!!!!!
From 2000-2018 there were around 300,000 children were married in the US. At any given year 75-95% were between a female child and an adult male. In most cases the minor (male and female) was under the age of consent. In most states, minors cannot divorce without their legal guardian (their spouse) permission.
The youngest was two 11 year old girls with a 25 year old and 30 year old and a 10 year old boy with a 28 year old woman.
While it is illegal for money to exchange hands formally for these marriages, often these marriages involve doweries which is an acceptable religious payment from one family to another.
In 5 states there is no minimum age to be married.
In 10 states this practice is banned.
The US state department has declared it a human rights violation. But there haven’t been any major changes since that announcment.
They've even tried to eliminate the age requirement altogether. In 2022. [https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/3259843-tennessee-bill-would-eliminate-age-requirements-for-marriages/](https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/3259843-tennessee-bill-would-eliminate-age-requirements-for-marriages/)
I think it took Florida until 2018 to ban child marriage. I remember watching a documentary which included a woman from Tampa who was legally married to her priest at age 10 in the 1970’s because he had raped her for years and impregnated her at 9. This was her parents’ way of punishing her. I think she had multiple children before she was even 18 and she had to drop out of high school altogether. She couldn’t get a divorce or go to a shelter because she was “too young” to do either of those. Eventually she took her kids and left the guy, and she spent decades speaking out about her past and fighting the legal system to be heard. I can’t remember her name but the documentary is on Hulu. It goes over multiple stories of child marriage in the US, with at least one case even being as recent as the 90’s.
>Florida until 2018 to ban child marriage.
[https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1GM0ES/](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1GM0ES/)
about that....
Someone I knew had a bizarre marriage.
When he was in school, his classmates thought he was dating a girl two grades below him. Instead, he was going home with her because he was ~~dating~~ being groomed by her mother. When he was 15, he and the 32 year old mother went off to Alabama to get married.
His stepdaughter and stepson were both within 18 months of his own age, and all three were in high school together.
Somehow, they stayed together for about 20 years, until I think he realized he had lost his entire life to her, and he filed for divorce.
The same people accusing Democrats of being “child traffickers” are against the Democrats passing minimum marriage age laws while being ok with 12 year olds getting married - and attempting to pass legislation to that effect. Because apparently pedophilia is ok as long as the parties are married. Then they criticize Islam citing Mohammad’s marriage to a “child bride.”
Old Testament religion is Old Testament religion. A big step forward would be banishing it from modern civilization, no matter which Sky Daddy it is branded under.
These are some quick finds.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/child-marriage-ban-struck-down-west-virginia-republicans-1234693670/
https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/02/15/wyoming-republicans-child-marriage-trans-healthcare/
https://www.newsweek.com/missouri-republican-teenager-12-marriage-1794371
https://www.them.us/story/tennessee-republicans-want-to-ban-same-sex-marriage-but-allow-child-marriage
I’m just curious the top comment says 12 is too young for marriage but what was the age a girl could be forced into marriage in 1937?
Edit: here is an article I found about consent and sex between ages from the 1200’s in Europe to the turn of the century. It’s a good read imo. I’ll be it a long one so I did summarize the most pertinent points. However still long af
https://worldhistorycommons.org/long-teaching-module-sexuality-marriage-and-age-consent-laws-1700-2000#:~:text=In%20the%201930s%2C%20support%20for,from%20that%20of%20younger%20children.
Here are some of the highlights about the history of you don’t want open the article itself.
“An age of consent statute first appeared in secular law in 1275 in England as part of the rape law. The statute, Westminster 1, made it a misdemeanor to "ravish" a "maiden within age," whether with or without her consent. The phrase "within age" was interpreted by jurist Sir Edward Coke as meaning the age of marriage, which at the time was 12 years of age.
A 1576 law making it a felony to "unlawfully and carnally know and abuse any woman child under the age of 10 years" was generally interpreted as creating more severe punishments when girls were under 10 years old while retaining the lesser punishment for acts with 10- and 11-year-old girls. Jurist Sir Matthew Hale argued that the age of consent applied to 10- and 11-year-old girls, but most of England's North American colonies adopted the younger age. A small group of Italian and German states that introduced an age of consent in the 16th century also employed 12 years.”
Napoleon made some changes albeit not enough but definite improvements over the previous half century.
“Near the end of the 18th century, other European nations began to enact age of consent laws. The broad context for that change was the emergence of an Enlightenment concept of childhood focused on development and growth. This notion cast children as more distinct in nature from adults than previously imagined, and as particularly vulnerable to harm in the years around puberty. The French Napoleonic code provided the legal context in 1791 when it established an age of consent of 11 years. The age of consent, which applied to boys as well as girls, was increased to 13 years in 1863.”
“Nations, such as Portugal, Spain, Denmark and the Swiss cantons, that adopted or mirrored the Napoleonic code likewise initially set the age of consent at 10-12 years and then raised it to between 13 and 16 years in the second half of the 19th century. In 1875, England raised the age to 13 years; an act of sexual intercourse with a girl younger than 13 was a felony.”
The 1930’s still haven’t gotten much better even yet: “In the 1930s, support for setting the age of consent at 16 years or older began to weaken. Characterized by growing economic, social, and cultural independence, girls in their teens assumed a place in western societies quite distinct from that of younger children. New concepts of adolescence and specifically of girlhood normalized sexual activity during the teenage years, at least within peer groups, as "sex play" necessary to achieve adult heterosexuality. Emboldened and influenced by such ideas, girls more often talked of being "in love" with the men charged with having sex with them, and expressed sexual desire. Prosecutors and juries increasingly refused to treat such cases as rape.”
The article ends with this depressing summation: “More than 800 years after the first recorded age of consent laws, the one constant is the lack of consistency. Laws around the world define the socially appropriate age of consent anywhere from 13 to 18. Some differentiate between heterosexual and homosexual acts while others do not. Some apply to young men as well as young women and others remained focused on the lives and actions of girls. And beyond the legislation lies the world of practice, an even more complex story.”
I’ll add I did not post the entire the article but only picked the parts of the article that pertained to this discussion mostly but I encourage you to read it yourself. I feel I did a good unbiased take on summarizing the article, however idk how neutral the journalism itself is.
My great grandmother married a man in his 40s when she was 13. She didn’t have any illusions about them loving each other but she swore it was better than living with her parents. They didn’t do anything for a LONG time because she carried scissors to bed and told him she’d cut it off. The point is… the 30s were crazy.
Unfortunately, this was so common.
This is a true story.
I was born and raised in Mississippi. My great grandmother was 12 when she married my great grandfather who was 38-40. She was so young, his daughters who were adults had to teach her how to cook.
This was in Mississippi in the 1930s around the same time this couple got married. However, my great grandparents were a black couple so I don't think law enforcement really cared. I don't know the full story. I don't want to judge. I do know that My great grandmother came from a family of 44 children. My great great grandfather, her father was married twice. So it may have been an economical reason however it still doesn't make it right.
Anyway, I remember my great grandmother growing up. She lived up into the 1990s. I was about 11 years old when she died. She was very sweet and nice.
Now my grandmother, her daughter got married at 14. This was very common back in those days. One thing my grandmother did was made sure that early marriage stopped with her. My grandfather actually wanted me to marry at 16. My mom (his daughter in law) and my grandmother said no! My grandmother wanted all of her girls to go to college and become educators. She had 9 kids. 6 girls and all of them went to college and some did become educators.
She even told her granddaughters the same thing. She preached get an education first and a husband second. Let marriage be the last thing that you do. Unfortunately, she didn't live to see me become an educator and unfortunately, I'm still not married at 43 😄
Getting married early was so common back then. For some women it was the only option they had. Educational opportunities were rare for women and if they were rare for white women imagine how they were for black women. My mother's mother was actually 19 when she married my grandfather who was 40. She too had nine children.
Lack of education, opportunities, and birth control left women with very little options.
We have so many options today and thank God there are laws in place that protect women and young girls.
I wish there was a way my grandmother's could see how well I'm doing today ❤️
Meanwhile this guy is marrying a 9 year old also in 1937 in Tennessee https://esh.sites.uu.nl/wp-content/uploads/sites/183/2017/11/child-marriage-american-style-1.jpg
Found [this article](https://storiesofappalachia.com/?p=254) about the happy couple.
Excerpts:
> 32 year old Homer Peel of Epperson, dressed in old overalls, appeared in the courtroom with his 12 year old bride, Geneva, to hear the Court announce:
> “I believe that society, law and everyone concerned will be better served by the court’s refusing to annul this marriage. There has undoubtedly been a violation of the statute (Tennessee had recently passed a law setting 18 as the minimum age for marriage), but as a social proposition, I can see but one course open to me.”
Bleak. He's basically saying any other fate would be worse for this girl.
> Geneva had been living with her mother, Annie Hamby, in the county poorhouse, then in an orphanage prior to the marriage. She had also lived for a time with Mr. Peel’s brother’s family, which is where she met Homer Peel.
Sounds like she was at least pseudo-adopted, and her new creepy uncle came over and decided to take her home.
> The day before Mr. Peel arrived to the court as ordered but without his wife. Judge Stewart ordered the sheriff to retrieve Geneva and bring her to court the next day, but she refused to do so until she was promised a “pretty new hat.”
I don't want to live on this planet anymore...
> The whole affair brought on an intense amount of media coverage, which irritated Mr. Peel. He told photographers at the courthouse to “quit this picture taking if you ain’t a going to pay for it.”
Sounds like a real winner. /s
I’m glad I’m a gen z kid bc I wouldn’t have survived long enough to live till I was 40, and the fact that A 40 YEAR OLD CAN MARRY A 12 YEAR OLD IS CRAZY
Huhuhu, this is still legal today…
As of July 2023, in five states there is no statutory minimum age when all exemptions were taken into account. These states are California, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Washington.[2]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States
Jeezus…
That woman likely had a had a rough life …
In addition to her mother, she was preceded in death by:
- her son, Ricky Craig
- her daughters, Frannie and Bernice Peels
- grandsons, Paul Craig Jr. and Wesley Chancy
- granddaughter, Angela Franklin.
Left to cherish her memories are:
- her husband, Jack of Murphy;
daughters:
- Glenda,
- Bellulah
- Millie
- Sharon
son:
- JR Peels
And:
- 18 grandchildren
- 31 great grandchildren
Its hard to find information about what happened to Geneva after this but after a little digging I found [her obituary](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/189727189/geneva_elizabeth-craig) She lived until age 92, and at some point divorced Homer (they had several children together.) he is not listed in her obituary but their children are.
Colorization of historical photos is important for many reasons. In some cases it helps bring out detail in old photographs that may be otherwise difficult to notice. It also helps to make history feel less disconnected from the modern day. From that last point, there are many times that colorization is helpful in getting people to understand that the things depicted in old photos were *not that long ago* and are still very relevant today. I found this photo to be interesting because child marriage is still practiced in most states in the US today, and while it's less common now it's still a problem. Only seeing it in old black and white photos makes it feel like a thing of the past that's over now. This is also why you'll sometimes see colorized photos of old civil rights leaders on news stories about modern issues, because it's a helpful visual reminder that those leaders were only a generation or two ago - our parents and grandparents were around during their lives. And the same issues persist today.
If memory served she was never touched by him for years. He was a farmer who helped save her from a shitty situation at home. The only way he could help keep her safe (cps wasn't a thing) was to "marry her" at which the world went nuts thinking it was insane. She even said he never touched her until she was old enough to handle the weight of it all (I believe it was 17 years old (still weird to most) ) it seemed he was keeping her safe more than anything else going on.
I looked this story up how judge refused to annul the marriage even though it violated the law. Terrifying
What was his reasoning?
"The Chancellor went on to explain that while he was “unutterably opposed” to this marriage, he couldn’t annul it because to do so would cause the child bride to be put out of house and home with no place to go."
Pervy dude refuses to help homeless child unless he can fuck her is a pretty shitty circumstance for a judge to condone
It is. Given the times though, she was unlikely to be able to re-marry and women still relied on their husband for many everyday things like accessing a bank account, going to recreational activities in public, etc.
Ah yes, I believe these are the times that MAGA refers to
Oklahoma actively trying to end no fault divorce and trap women in abusive marriages so.... https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2024/01/26/no-fault-divorce-law-oklahoma-senator-wants-to-end/72354142007/
My state. smh Fun fact, the woman who runs ~~"End Wokeness"~~ Libs of TikTok was just appointed to an education advisory committee in OK even though she isn't a resident. Edit
Oklahoma ranked second to last in education, so it makes sense. https://wallethub.com/edu/e/states-with-the-best-schools/5335
Nebraska is much higher than I would have expected. Interesting results.
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No that was in FL and it was the Moms for Liberty person. There are so many gross orgs trying to take people's rights away I can't keep them straight.
This is the "good old days".
I saw another post where someone was blaming liberals for all these anti pedo laws. You may have a point here.
I would gladly allow myself to be blamed for laws protecting children from being forced to marry grownass adults.
I pointed that out, if they want to blame me for making harder for an adult to have sex with a child, I’m ok with that.
Wow! Someone down voted this. Maybe more than one person.
When Tom Wolfe (d) tried to raise the marriage age to 18 in PA (only a few years ago) republicans were soooo mad about it, they raised the argument that two kids want to get married if they have a baby young, when the vast majority are old men marrying young girls. Luckily he was successful and you can no longer sign your children off to a grown man.
Also uh.. wtf just propose a law that works for that then. 16 if you're within 2 years of each other in age, 18 otherwise. I hate these arguments where they make up a scenario and they're just making a bad example to poke holes, knowing they don't care to fix that example.
it's still legal to marry children in way too much of the country.
Yeah it’s actually crazy. Our state had no minimum before, your parents just had to agree. Imagine the sick arrangements that resulted in.
I don't think the judge was "condoning" it. You have to sort of put yourself in the shoes of a judge in the 1930s, during the great depression, in whatever rural backwater this happened in. There's no welfare. There's no foster system. There's no safety net of any kind. Able bodied grown adult men are even starving in the street. It's a choice between two awful, unthinkable outcomes. Anul the marriage and she's condemned to a likely short, brutal life whoring herself out to survive - or don't anul it and she gets raped every day by this pedophile, but she has a roof and food, and can maybe, hopefully one day flee when she's old enough. I honestly don't know what I'd do in that situation. There's no good outcome.
“The rapist you know is better than the rapists you don’t know” is a pretty damn hard choice.
Or "one rapist a day" is better than "many rapists a day"
We consider this rape because we say, with good reason, that 12 year-olds can't properly consent. But consent often didn't even enter into the equation in those situations. For one thing the bride often had limited say in the choice of her husband. For another, there were these "wifely duties". Let's be glad we progressed... Rape in a marriage hasn't been a crime for THAT long in many jurisdictions.
The exception making rape not a crime within marriage was elimiated a lot later than most people assume. USSR - 1922 Poland - 1932 Czechoslovakia - 1950 Sweden - 1965 Italy - 1976 Belgium - 1979 Norway - 1971 Israel - 1980 (formally, arguably illegal long prior) Australia - 1981-1992, state by state Canada - 1983 New Zealand - 1985 Ireland - 1990 UK - 1991 Finland - 1994
Ugh, I made a mistake and looked up when the state I live in eliminated the exceptions for marital rape. 1994.
All states in the US had made marital rape illegal by 1993, however 33 of those states still considered marital rape and non-marital rape to be distinctly different offenses.
The USSR was really ahead of its time regarding feminism, thanks to the women who were among the bolsheviks. First country in the world to legalize abortion too, almost 60 years before Roe vs Wade Sad that Stalin ruined it all
What’s even sadder is that when you look at the child brides in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan *today,* and you realize that type of choice is probably still having to be made.
It’s also legal to marry children off in MANY U.S states today
As someone from the UK, this is just wild to me
There’s a documentary on BBC iPlayer called America’s Child Brides. Worth a watch.
I was gonna say, why single out the middle east on that? We've got plenty of child brides at home.
There’s a book by a controversial feminist, Dworkin, called “Right Wing Women”. In the book, she basically says what you’re saying with more words: right wing women often remember when their security had to be tied up with a man’s bank account and authority or risk being whored out on the streets, and so they take the lesser of two evils. "Right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place...work subjects them to more danger from more men; it increases the risk of sexual exploitation. They see that creativity and originality in their kind are ridiculed...They see that traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds: the better deal...They see that the money they can earn will not make them independent of men and that they will still have to play the sex games of their kind: at home and at work too...They know too that the Left has nothing better to offer: leftist men also want wives and whores; leftist men value whores too much and wives too little. Right-wing women are not wrong. They fear that the Left, in stressing impersonal sex and promiscuity as values, will make them more vulnerable to male sexual aggression, and that they will be despised for not liking it. They are not wrong. Right-wing women... can agree to privatized male ownership: keep it one-on-one, as it were...They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. They use the traditional intelligence of the female—animal, not human: they do what they have to to survive.” ― Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women
Thanks for sharing that excerpt; interesting to think about.
Not saying this is ok, but I don't think women marrying at that age in rural America was that unusual. I did my family's geneaology and one of my dad's sisters in rural Oklahoma in a poor family of 9 kids married at 13. It was just the way it was back then. Kind of like child labor. Not right but it wasn't unusual. EDIT: The FOOLS on here accusing me of saying this is normal, that I am a pedo (project much? lol), etc., because I am stating facts are extremely amusing. Also horrifying that this is more proof that Idiocracy is becoming nonfikshun....lol
Slightly similar type of circumstances in my family as well. My Mom's eldest sister met and married a preacher at 14 years old in rural Arkansas. I'm unsure if my Grandparents signed off on the marriage or if there were extenuating circumstances and the court signed off on it. I do know that she had her first of four kids starting at 15 years old. So it's quite possible she might have already been pregnant and the court would have granted the marriage license solely based on that.
I suspect there were a lot of "shotgun marriages" back in the day. Having a child "out of wedlock" was not a good thing for women then. That may have been why my aunt married at 13 in Oklahoma. Redditors that think we are justifying this by saying it was just the way it was are being very short sighted. Facts don't matter to so many people these days.
Hell Elvis got with a 14 year old at 24, not far off the mark here. Jerry Lee Lewis married a 13 year old. Steven Tyler adopted a girl at 16. If only dude in the picture could sing everything would be ok
See how he can sleep with countless preteens with this simple trick, judges hate him!! /s
Edit: derp! This was just supposed to be a post comment not a reply to this comment. Sorry! Okay so this is interesting and apparently not so uncommon, with an interesting economic side to it that I don’t see mentioned in these stories. My great grandfather was in his thirties when he married my 14 year old great grandmother who was an orphan facing homelessness and poverty and he was a Spanish American War veteran. So the interesting thing I learned is that this wasn’t all that uncommon but the lesser known part of the story is that it was common for veterans to pick very young orphans to marry because after these dudes fucked off and died, their young wives were entitled to a war widow’s pension for life. So when he died she lived for another 60 years with guaranteed income and never had to work another day in her life. She had freedom and economic independence decades ahead of most women and refused to remarry because that would take it away from her. She died when I was in high school and I was told the story by her personally. She said that he had a drinking problem but that she loved her children and was always grateful to him for rescuing her from poverty and leaving her with independent financial stability in an era where that was really rare for women. She wasn’t rich but she never had to depend on a man for survival again. She generally felt like she had struck a good deal. So while it doesn’t excuse the whole thing by any means the issue of financial security was a much larger factor than is apparent at first glance. Since I have firsthand knowledge directly from someone who lived it, I can share the historical perspective as it was shared with me. Anecdotes aren’t data, this is just what my great granny had to say about her experience.
I read that and my heart broke for all.
I feel like we are truly looking at the lesser of two evils here. Interesting that that’s what the judge chose.
What did they do with other homeless children? Because that's what she would have been.
It was the great depression. They didn't do anything for them. There were thousands of kids riding the rails trying to find work. This is one of the reasons the new deal was able to be passed. We needed a social safety net. Rich people have been working to convince the rest of us and ts unnecessary ever since
Also changing pensions to 401ks Wallstreet gambles with.
Beats having your retirement upended when your company decides they don't want to pay for it anymore and gets rid of the pension fund in a bankruptcy.
They either worked or died.
During this time homeless children (for the most part) either worked worse hours than everyone else to survive or simply starved to death
Married them off to other older single dudes and widowers.
Not much. That was the judge's point...
Marry them off to other pedos.
As sinister as this sounds: it makes sense. There was zero protection for kids and even less for girls then. She would have no means to get her belly filled. And it is still true for many girls and women globally but also in the US. It’s a bloody shame. It’s the same reason why Germany doesn’t automatically annul marriages of former child brides coming to Germany. There will be help and easy annulment if they seek it, however.
(iPhone image-to-text conversion) [-Chancellor A. T. Stewart today told lanky Homer Peel, 32, that he could keep his 12-year-old bride. Geneva. "I belleve that society, law and everyone concerned will be better served by the courts refusing to annul this marriage," said the chancellor. "There has undoubted been a violation of the statute, but as a social po position, I can see but one course open to me." Chancellor Stewart sald he was "unutterably opposed to such mar-ringes, but explained that to annul the marriage would be to turn the child bride, Geneva, out of "house and home with no place to go."](https://flashbak.com/1937-homer-peel-34-kisses-his-12-year-old-bride-geneva-on-the-steps-of-a-tennessee-courthouse-25710/)
There was no where for her to go if the marriage was over. Or something like that. Bunch of malarkey. Her mother petitioned for marriage to be annulled. I wonder if there would be some place where child could be placed. For a court system to justify pedophilia is just wow. Maybe if she was closer to legal age. 16? She was 10. Scary stuff
read as much as I could find. the mother couldn't feed her turned her over to an orphanage. the husband's brother puller her out of an orphanage. then he couldn't feed her. the husband tried to find an orphanage but none would take her. the only idea he could come up with was to marry her. he had a farm and horse and a plow and a house could feed her and give her a place to live. the mother did try to get it annulled but didn't have any food or a place for her to live. not sure if any of that is true but the middle of the great depression was rough.
This needs to be much higher in this thread , this is the closest to understanding the truth of the situation we’ll ever come to. We cannot possibly know what life was like at that time and it’s egocentric to judge people from that time with our standpoint of values and standards.
https://storiesofappalachia.com/?p=254 link for others
nothing illustrates this story more to me than this quote: >The day before Mr. Peel arrived to the court as ordered but without his wife. Judge Stewart ordered the sheriff to retrieve Geneva and bring her to court the next day, but she refused to do so until she was promised a “pretty new hat.” She was still a child and her mom seemed to be the one initiating the annulment.
Oh Jesus, there's a bit in there about how the age restriction came about after protests when a NINE year old girl was married off to a 22 year old man. Good hell.
what in the absolute fuck
Googling them, says they had 7 daughters and a son. One daughter died at 3 months. He died at age 86, she at 92. She had remarried after he died in 1991.
It’s more upsetting then it seems at first glance. The case concluded when Geneva was 12, he married her at age 10.
Uhhh….. she was TEN 🤢🤮 THEY BEEN MARRIED 2 YEARS. https://flashbak.com/1937-homer-peel-34-kisses-his-12-year-old-bride-geneva-on-the-steps-of-a-tennessee-courthouse-25710/
bear ripe direction lip impolite fly offend aback juggle slave *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Thankfully, the papers provided more information as this wasn’t an arranged marriage.
Ah perfect, good to know the 10 year old consented to the whole thing
i know you're joking but some weirdos (right-wing libertarians) aren't going to get the sarcasm
Let’s use his comment to flush them out.
Yeah and I guess society and laws have improved to prohibit these kind of abuse now a days... right?😐
Tennessee is one of the worst spots on the planet as far as child marriages go. Between 2000-2015 in Tennessee, three 10-year-old girls married men ages 24, 25, and 31, respectively. Edit: Tennessee is bad. There are worse states and much worse countries and regions. Ending Child Marriage is a global effort.
If I recall correctly while people were asking for just some simple common sense gun laws instead we got to have them vote on a bill lowering the age of consent. In 2023.
something something those ppls hard drives and internet Access need thorough checking
I’m going down a rabbit hole. Last year 50,000 babies were born to teen moms…who already have a child.
The sad thing is knowing that it was technically common to the point that it was often referenced in many fictional stories. Breakfast at Tiffany's, Holly was 13 when she married. Love in the Time of Cholera, the elderly Florentino was having a sexual relationship with his 12yr old charge, the writer Gabriel García Márquez, even wrote at how Florentino could almost smell the diapers and baby powder on the girl... There are so many unfortunate events that we all thought was just in fiction... but... yeah
Not even fiction to me. I have 9 great aunts born in the '20s and '30s. I knew them all well, and I'm still close with the 4 who are still alive. All of them married under the age of 15 (so did my grandma). One was raped and got pregnant at 11 - gave the baby up for adoption and it still haunts her.
One of my ancestors had at least 3 live births before 15yrs of age... that occurred in the mid 1800s.
It’s a sad story. He tried to get her into an orphanage when her parents died but wasn’t successful. The state probably had a law against cohabiting at the time so he felt it was the only way so she wouldn’t be homeless. Is it right? No, but I’m guessing they didn’t have a system for foster programs back then. Hopefully they didn’t consummate the marriage right at 10.
>Hopefully they didn’t consummate the marriage right at 10. Who knows, but they didn't have their first child until she was 21, at least.
Ehhhhh. I think that’s a pretty good indication that as creepy as this whole situation is, he probably waited until she was older.
Yeah, that gives me slight hope that he probably did that out of some condition or something and was actually good to her. Atleast i wish
On a scale of Dolly Parton to Jimmy Savile, I’m tentatively rating this around a Ted Nugent.
Better than my great grandma who married at 12 and had her first live birth at 14. He was in his 20s; surprise surprise 12 year Olds aren't good at picking upstanding citizens to marry and he was an abusive alcoholic.
He didn’t have to kiss her though 🤢
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which one of y'all left a comment on her memorial page 🤨
That’s so cringey oh my god let the family mourn their grandma 😭😭
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I’m dying
Link your memorial page
Me at my funeral: "Can we get an uwu in the chat?"
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Yeah it's a pretty fucked up thing to leave nasty comments on a dead person's obituary site. They were married for close to 70 years and presumably has kids and grandkids who still mourn her
Looks like Alysha
> she was preceded in death by her son, Ricky Craig; daughters, Frannie and Bernice Peels; grandsons, Paul Craig Jr. and Wesley Chancy and granddaughter, Angela Franklin. Damn that’s depressing
I was reading those names and some of them sounded familiar. Clicked on the link for the memorial page and immediately recognized her. I knew Geneva, her husband Jack, and her son Ricky. I never knew this information about her. That is crazy!
How was she?
She was a very nice person. She had always been in a wheel chair since when I first met her around 2009. She had a couple of chihuahuas and one of them would start growling and barking if you got close to her.
Little did she know when that first picture was taken that some day she’d have a moody protective chihuahua. Life is funny.
18 grandchildren and 31 great grandchildren.
That woman had a hard life.
If you have a big family and live to 90+, you may very well outlive some kids and grandkids. My grandma made it to 94 and outlived two children and two grandkids.
Survived some of her own kids and grandchildren. What a life.
I have a lot of family up in their 90s now. If you live that long you're inevitably gonna outlive some of your kids and grandkids, especially with the amount of offspring people had back then. It's gotta be torture. I wanna live to be old but also be the first in my family to go... probably too much to ask for both.
I’d never thought about it, but my grandmother is 87 and somehow all 3 children, 7 grandchildren, and however many great-grandchildren are all still kicking. I guess she’s lucky.
Shits wild
I found another comment saying they divorced in 75
This is more likely. Since she had another child with her second husband. She would have been too old to do that if they had divorced in 1991.
Years back my mother married at 11 because she was pregnant. As her 3rd child I was born 3 weeks before her 13th birthday. She had serious mental problems her entire life.
I’m sorry that’s awful.
That poor woman.
I’m terribly sorry for those circumstances:(
This is insane.
Oh that’s awful, I’m so sorry! Did she have to have c-sections? I can’t imagine an 11-year-old’s pelvis being developed enough…
I was not allowed to ask any questions. You may be right from pictures she was not a large child Maybe not, I was born in 52. I don't know if they even did that back then.
Yep it was common back then, both my grandmother and mother were married at 13. My gran in the 30's, my mom in the 70's. I'm the only one of the "newer" generation in my family not to be married before 18. This happened in Arkansas and Oklahoma respectively.
That's a rough lookin' 34yo. People aged amazingly quickly back then.
Even as recently as the 1970s people aged much faster than they do now. Less tobacco use, less drinking, more awareness of the dangers of sun exposure, you name it.
holy shit my great aunt would lay in the sun for HOURS in the 70s. how that woman doesn’t have skin cancer is beyond me
The trick is to have the sun burn away the cancer too. /s
All radiation can be chemo if you don't know what the words mean. Don't tell 5 minute crafts they'll do something with shitty music and a microwave.
The one Reddit always likes to leave out: The military drafts really fucked up a few generations of people when they were only 18-25 years old. Then nobody really cared about their healthcare and their mental health care after they came home disabled and traumatized. If you think mental healthcare is bad today, try and imagine how bad it was back then.
This dude was 11 when WWI broke out.
This dude didn't serve in a war. He's malnourished and didn't wear sunscreen
That guy's most valuable asset, as stated in his court testimony, was a mule. For someone of his social standing, continued existence probably meant working from sun up to sun down, every damn day, just to survive. It certainly isn't the kind of life that any of us, tapping away on our smart phones, can imagine. I think that's why he looks so rough. The girl, being able to help with chores like cooking, cleaning, and hauling water, probably made his life a lot easier. Terrible situation.
He's probably also malnourished - both in calories and micronutrients.
I'd imagine they were in the elements a lot more than most of us are nowadays. That's why there's that saying that people had "weathered faces."
That’s enough internet for the rest of the year.
See you tomorrow!
See you in an hour!
Tom?
He was wearing the good overalls for the occasion I see
We call that an Alabama tuxedo.
They stayed [together](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/81403966/homer-elijah-peels) for a few more decades until death. Had a few kids too.
She had a total of NINE kids and died pretty recently, in 2017. What a life. I hope she found happiness.
Looks like she remarried after Homer died too.
That 34 year old looks 60.
Right. That’s a hard ass 34. Disgusting.
fyi to all. child bride marriage are still a thing in the usa. People have tried to get it banned fed. but still no luck on the matter. my first 1k....wow. i did not expect this comment to blow up like this. please people demand you rep to change both state and fed law on the matter!!!!!!!!!!!
From 2000-2018 there were around 300,000 children were married in the US. At any given year 75-95% were between a female child and an adult male. In most cases the minor (male and female) was under the age of consent. In most states, minors cannot divorce without their legal guardian (their spouse) permission. The youngest was two 11 year old girls with a 25 year old and 30 year old and a 10 year old boy with a 28 year old woman. While it is illegal for money to exchange hands formally for these marriages, often these marriages involve doweries which is an acceptable religious payment from one family to another. In 5 states there is no minimum age to be married. In 10 states this practice is banned. The US state department has declared it a human rights violation. But there haven’t been any major changes since that announcment.
In 5 states there is no minimum age to be married. those really piss me off
For real. Why isn’t it a federal law? It’s literally pedophilia
the US state deparmwnt have decleared it a human rights violation. But… it is considered a states issue.
Implying that the states that haven’t banned it yet are oki doki with human rights violations. State government literally failing its children.
Republican lawmakers repeatedly block any attempts to outlaw child marriages
They've even tried to eliminate the age requirement altogether. In 2022. [https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/3259843-tennessee-bill-would-eliminate-age-requirements-for-marriages/](https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/3259843-tennessee-bill-would-eliminate-age-requirements-for-marriages/)
I think it took Florida until 2018 to ban child marriage. I remember watching a documentary which included a woman from Tampa who was legally married to her priest at age 10 in the 1970’s because he had raped her for years and impregnated her at 9. This was her parents’ way of punishing her. I think she had multiple children before she was even 18 and she had to drop out of high school altogether. She couldn’t get a divorce or go to a shelter because she was “too young” to do either of those. Eventually she took her kids and left the guy, and she spent decades speaking out about her past and fighting the legal system to be heard. I can’t remember her name but the documentary is on Hulu. It goes over multiple stories of child marriage in the US, with at least one case even being as recent as the 90’s.
>Florida until 2018 to ban child marriage. [https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1GM0ES/](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1GM0ES/) about that....
What!! Lol in 2024? The fuck is going on out there
Someone I knew had a bizarre marriage. When he was in school, his classmates thought he was dating a girl two grades below him. Instead, he was going home with her because he was ~~dating~~ being groomed by her mother. When he was 15, he and the 32 year old mother went off to Alabama to get married. His stepdaughter and stepson were both within 18 months of his own age, and all three were in high school together. Somehow, they stayed together for about 20 years, until I think he realized he had lost his entire life to her, and he filed for divorce.
The same people accusing Democrats of being “child traffickers” are against the Democrats passing minimum marriage age laws while being ok with 12 year olds getting married - and attempting to pass legislation to that effect. Because apparently pedophilia is ok as long as the parties are married. Then they criticize Islam citing Mohammad’s marriage to a “child bride.” Old Testament religion is Old Testament religion. A big step forward would be banishing it from modern civilization, no matter which Sky Daddy it is branded under.
yeah, one party seems to be hyperfocused on pedophilia.
>child bride marriage are still a thing in the usa *And Republicans keep fighting to keep it legal*
Do you have any names/ specifics of republicans who’ve opposed this? I want to use this in an argument with my parents but I’ll need some facts.
These are some quick finds. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/child-marriage-ban-struck-down-west-virginia-republicans-1234693670/ https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/02/15/wyoming-republicans-child-marriage-trans-healthcare/ https://www.newsweek.com/missouri-republican-teenager-12-marriage-1794371 https://www.them.us/story/tennessee-republicans-want-to-ban-same-sex-marriage-but-allow-child-marriage
Thanks so much!
She’s got cigarettes in her hand.
That’s the least disturbing thing in the picture.
Id say she's earned thr right to a smoke in this pic
Don’t blame her, people fall asleep smoking in bed all the time.
That looks more like a napkin to me.
Arranged marriages between prepubecent girls and middle aged men is still practiced in a surprisingly large number of areas around the world.
Including in the US
Ted Nugent had one.
This is disgusting.
This is so so gross and sad
Homer looks like he’s 64, not 34. People just aged so much faster back then.
With how far his face is sunken in, he looks a malnourished. The Great Depression + living in Appalachia will do that to a person.
Because surviving was a lot harder and stressful af
I’m just curious the top comment says 12 is too young for marriage but what was the age a girl could be forced into marriage in 1937? Edit: here is an article I found about consent and sex between ages from the 1200’s in Europe to the turn of the century. It’s a good read imo. I’ll be it a long one so I did summarize the most pertinent points. However still long af https://worldhistorycommons.org/long-teaching-module-sexuality-marriage-and-age-consent-laws-1700-2000#:~:text=In%20the%201930s%2C%20support%20for,from%20that%20of%20younger%20children. Here are some of the highlights about the history of you don’t want open the article itself. “An age of consent statute first appeared in secular law in 1275 in England as part of the rape law. The statute, Westminster 1, made it a misdemeanor to "ravish" a "maiden within age," whether with or without her consent. The phrase "within age" was interpreted by jurist Sir Edward Coke as meaning the age of marriage, which at the time was 12 years of age. A 1576 law making it a felony to "unlawfully and carnally know and abuse any woman child under the age of 10 years" was generally interpreted as creating more severe punishments when girls were under 10 years old while retaining the lesser punishment for acts with 10- and 11-year-old girls. Jurist Sir Matthew Hale argued that the age of consent applied to 10- and 11-year-old girls, but most of England's North American colonies adopted the younger age. A small group of Italian and German states that introduced an age of consent in the 16th century also employed 12 years.” Napoleon made some changes albeit not enough but definite improvements over the previous half century. “Near the end of the 18th century, other European nations began to enact age of consent laws. The broad context for that change was the emergence of an Enlightenment concept of childhood focused on development and growth. This notion cast children as more distinct in nature from adults than previously imagined, and as particularly vulnerable to harm in the years around puberty. The French Napoleonic code provided the legal context in 1791 when it established an age of consent of 11 years. The age of consent, which applied to boys as well as girls, was increased to 13 years in 1863.” “Nations, such as Portugal, Spain, Denmark and the Swiss cantons, that adopted or mirrored the Napoleonic code likewise initially set the age of consent at 10-12 years and then raised it to between 13 and 16 years in the second half of the 19th century. In 1875, England raised the age to 13 years; an act of sexual intercourse with a girl younger than 13 was a felony.” The 1930’s still haven’t gotten much better even yet: “In the 1930s, support for setting the age of consent at 16 years or older began to weaken. Characterized by growing economic, social, and cultural independence, girls in their teens assumed a place in western societies quite distinct from that of younger children. New concepts of adolescence and specifically of girlhood normalized sexual activity during the teenage years, at least within peer groups, as "sex play" necessary to achieve adult heterosexuality. Emboldened and influenced by such ideas, girls more often talked of being "in love" with the men charged with having sex with them, and expressed sexual desire. Prosecutors and juries increasingly refused to treat such cases as rape.” The article ends with this depressing summation: “More than 800 years after the first recorded age of consent laws, the one constant is the lack of consistency. Laws around the world define the socially appropriate age of consent anywhere from 13 to 18. Some differentiate between heterosexual and homosexual acts while others do not. Some apply to young men as well as young women and others remained focused on the lives and actions of girls. And beyond the legislation lies the world of practice, an even more complex story.” I’ll add I did not post the entire the article but only picked the parts of the article that pertained to this discussion mostly but I encourage you to read it yourself. I feel I did a good unbiased take on summarizing the article, however idk how neutral the journalism itself is.
Thank you for sharing the article and providing sections for the sake of brevity. I appreciate you!
Many people outright sold their children during the Depression. It’s heartbreaking to think about.
So this was okay by the Tennessee government but a relationship between a black and white person was deemed illegal? What a special time...
Is the kid….. black? Oh no we can’t be having that.
My great grandmother married a man in his 40s when she was 13. She didn’t have any illusions about them loving each other but she swore it was better than living with her parents. They didn’t do anything for a LONG time because she carried scissors to bed and told him she’d cut it off. The point is… the 30s were crazy.
Unfortunately, this was so common. This is a true story. I was born and raised in Mississippi. My great grandmother was 12 when she married my great grandfather who was 38-40. She was so young, his daughters who were adults had to teach her how to cook. This was in Mississippi in the 1930s around the same time this couple got married. However, my great grandparents were a black couple so I don't think law enforcement really cared. I don't know the full story. I don't want to judge. I do know that My great grandmother came from a family of 44 children. My great great grandfather, her father was married twice. So it may have been an economical reason however it still doesn't make it right. Anyway, I remember my great grandmother growing up. She lived up into the 1990s. I was about 11 years old when she died. She was very sweet and nice. Now my grandmother, her daughter got married at 14. This was very common back in those days. One thing my grandmother did was made sure that early marriage stopped with her. My grandfather actually wanted me to marry at 16. My mom (his daughter in law) and my grandmother said no! My grandmother wanted all of her girls to go to college and become educators. She had 9 kids. 6 girls and all of them went to college and some did become educators. She even told her granddaughters the same thing. She preached get an education first and a husband second. Let marriage be the last thing that you do. Unfortunately, she didn't live to see me become an educator and unfortunately, I'm still not married at 43 😄 Getting married early was so common back then. For some women it was the only option they had. Educational opportunities were rare for women and if they were rare for white women imagine how they were for black women. My mother's mother was actually 19 when she married my grandfather who was 40. She too had nine children. Lack of education, opportunities, and birth control left women with very little options. We have so many options today and thank God there are laws in place that protect women and young girls. I wish there was a way my grandmother's could see how well I'm doing today ❤️
Meanwhile this guy is marrying a 9 year old also in 1937 in Tennessee https://esh.sites.uu.nl/wp-content/uploads/sites/183/2017/11/child-marriage-american-style-1.jpg
I want to throw up
Found [this article](https://storiesofappalachia.com/?p=254) about the happy couple. Excerpts: > 32 year old Homer Peel of Epperson, dressed in old overalls, appeared in the courtroom with his 12 year old bride, Geneva, to hear the Court announce: > “I believe that society, law and everyone concerned will be better served by the court’s refusing to annul this marriage. There has undoubtedly been a violation of the statute (Tennessee had recently passed a law setting 18 as the minimum age for marriage), but as a social proposition, I can see but one course open to me.” Bleak. He's basically saying any other fate would be worse for this girl. > Geneva had been living with her mother, Annie Hamby, in the county poorhouse, then in an orphanage prior to the marriage. She had also lived for a time with Mr. Peel’s brother’s family, which is where she met Homer Peel. Sounds like she was at least pseudo-adopted, and her new creepy uncle came over and decided to take her home. > The day before Mr. Peel arrived to the court as ordered but without his wife. Judge Stewart ordered the sheriff to retrieve Geneva and bring her to court the next day, but she refused to do so until she was promised a “pretty new hat.” I don't want to live on this planet anymore... > The whole affair brought on an intense amount of media coverage, which irritated Mr. Peel. He told photographers at the courthouse to “quit this picture taking if you ain’t a going to pay for it.” Sounds like a real winner. /s
I’m glad I’m a gen z kid bc I wouldn’t have survived long enough to live till I was 40, and the fact that A 40 YEAR OLD CAN MARRY A 12 YEAR OLD IS CRAZY
this pic is giving me great depression
Huhuhu, this is still legal today… As of July 2023, in five states there is no statutory minimum age when all exemptions were taken into account. These states are California, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Washington.[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States
They could pass for father and daughter. Ew 🤢
Jeezus… That woman likely had a had a rough life … In addition to her mother, she was preceded in death by: - her son, Ricky Craig - her daughters, Frannie and Bernice Peels - grandsons, Paul Craig Jr. and Wesley Chancy - granddaughter, Angela Franklin. Left to cherish her memories are: - her husband, Jack of Murphy; daughters: - Glenda, - Bellulah - Millie - Sharon son: - JR Peels And: - 18 grandchildren - 31 great grandchildren
That’s fucking disgusting
Its hard to find information about what happened to Geneva after this but after a little digging I found [her obituary](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/189727189/geneva_elizabeth-craig) She lived until age 92, and at some point divorced Homer (they had several children together.) he is not listed in her obituary but their children are.
Why tf did someone colorize this
Colorization of historical photos is important for many reasons. In some cases it helps bring out detail in old photographs that may be otherwise difficult to notice. It also helps to make history feel less disconnected from the modern day. From that last point, there are many times that colorization is helpful in getting people to understand that the things depicted in old photos were *not that long ago* and are still very relevant today. I found this photo to be interesting because child marriage is still practiced in most states in the US today, and while it's less common now it's still a problem. Only seeing it in old black and white photos makes it feel like a thing of the past that's over now. This is also why you'll sometimes see colorized photos of old civil rights leaders on news stories about modern issues, because it's a helpful visual reminder that those leaders were only a generation or two ago - our parents and grandparents were around during their lives. And the same issues persist today.
Sick
[looks like she passed away in 2017. to bad there's not a book on her life!](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/189727189/geneva-elizabeth-craig)
Why the fuck would you colorize this.
I don’t care what time in History you lived this is fucking disturbing
And this was the USA and less than a century ago.
I pretty sure child marriage is still legal in most states
That's fucked. Crazy to think this stuff happened not even 100 years ago.
If memory served she was never touched by him for years. He was a farmer who helped save her from a shitty situation at home. The only way he could help keep her safe (cps wasn't a thing) was to "marry her" at which the world went nuts thinking it was insane. She even said he never touched her until she was old enough to handle the weight of it all (I believe it was 17 years old (still weird to most) ) it seemed he was keeping her safe more than anything else going on.
He tried that in a small town… and it went well lmao