UtahJakey

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  1. I didn't realize there were goal posts involved here. I was responding to mnn727's comment that some how presentism is influencing our view of the situation. I can't find a rationale to believe that a teenage girl 100 years ago would find the situation somehow less "icky" as my teenage daughter calls it now. Even with your link to the fair post on the subject matter we see that a marriage of someone so young was rare back then and a 42 year age gap was staggeringly rare. The combination of the two means that this wasn't a typical everyday frontier marriage. UJ
  2. Is it really a big leap to think a 15 year old girl might not want a sexual relationship with a man 42 years older than her? Would you have been interested in such a relationship when you were 15 years old?
  3. 20 years is still a lot closer that a 42 year age difference. That's probably about the same as you marrying your husbands father. With 2 generations between a couple it would probably take quite a while to feel comfortable romantically. Especially for a girl 15 years old. I feel like the world is moving in a good direction in regards to marriage. Marriages are made by choice(mostly) and are viewed as equals and fathers take a much more active role in the home matters for a family. UJ
  4. Another interesting point about this subject came up when my daughter and I were talking again last night. It was around dating and polygamy. She asked me "are polygamist men allowed to actively date to find new potential wives. Like when Pres. Snow was courting Minnie Jensen, did they go on dates prior to their engagement and marriage? What kind of a date does a 57 year old man and a 15 year old girl go on? " I have to say I was a bit tongue tied. Does anyone know the dating rules that were observed when practicing polygamy? UJ
  5. The statistics I cited are from US Census data used in the FAIR link finrock posted. You can find specific details for each census like the 1850 on here. UJ
  6. The story is that President Snow approached Eleanor when she was 14 and asked her to promise to one day to become his wife. They weren't actually married until 3 years later when she was 17. Eleanor was the younger sister of Mary Elizabeth Houtz Snow one of President Snows earlier plural marriages.
  7. I don't know if you're being deliberately obtuse but the distribution of the first marriage ages were on the links provided by myself and the other participants in this thread. Yes I do. It's a simple matter of numbers. From similar census data we know there were slightly more Mormon men than women in the Utah territory. The disparity is even greater if you included non-Mormons in the area. Assuming similar mortality between men and women the only way men can take 10/20/30 wives is by stepping out of the natural demographics and marrying younger and younger women. For that reason polygamy was going to be unsustainable from a population standpoint. It's the same reason why the FLDS have "lost boys". UJ
  8. I haven't gone searching but I would imagine that we would see similar one sided reporting from the newspapers in Chicago, Boston, or DC. I suspect the standard for objectivity for reporting on the polygamist dealings of the Mormons was pretty low. If you comparted the Times to Hearst's and Pulitizer's papers of the day even articles like the one I listed seem controlled. UJ
  9. I think you're confused. The US Census was reporting first marriages and the statistics I reported and the one others have linked to in the FAIR article all show the same thing. And what's up with the "cultish Marminz" thing. Are you reading along? Do you realize my daughter and I are LDS and are descendants of the very people we're talking about? UJ (unless this loudmouth_mormon person is just playing a character and I shouldn't take their responses seriously?)
  10. The historical context for the condemnations of polygamy and the buildup to the Utah war is interesting. This is right after the 1856 election where the Republican platform was "to prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism: polygamy and slavery." Now your characterization of the NY Times that it "didn't have the respect it commands today--it was just another member of the yellow press" is surprising to me and contrary to the history I've read. From the point when Raymond founded the paper the history I've read was that the Times enjoyed a solid reputation and was not considered in the same company as the actual "yellow" papers the New York World and the New York Journal. UJ
  11. As someone in this thread suggested maybe something in her own words would be helpful. I found this quote from her. It's from Latter Leaves in the Life Of Lorenzo Snow. I don't have access to the footnote but I suspect it is a interview or some sort of direct quote from his wife. This continues to get more interesting. UJ
  12. Finrock just provided a link to FAIR, which uses that same US Census information data that I quoted above. You'll notice that is shows a mean age of marriage for women of 22.5 years of age and that "For young women, marriage in the early to mid teens was rare". Specifically less than 2%. I'm beginning to think you just post links without reading them and offering off the cuff criticism. If you read the FAIR without examining the data you'll see that they are implying it's not big deal and a common occurrence for such marriages but the actual data they cite doesn't show that. I wish people would stop using FAIR to defend the church. It's embarrassingly bad. UJ
  13. I decided to take the advice from posters here and prepare some good statistics to backup the idea that big age gaps and teenage brides were a common type of marriage in the 19th century. What I found actually said the opposite. The US census bureau published their statistics of the average age of of first marriage from 1790 until the present. In the 1800's the average age of first marriage was 21-22 years old. (U.S. Census Bureau, Table MS-2, “Estimated Age at First Marriage, by sex") Another example of the prevailing acceptance of such marriages would be in contemporary writings of the times. I found a article titled "Graphic Narrative of Mormon Outrages", The New York Times, May 19, 1857. One of the outrages about Mormon Polygamy in the article was the age of the marriages I've found plenty of people express the idea that this type of marriage was commonplace but nothing with actual sources backing the idea. I'm going to try to find some family resources and see if their is a journal entry or letters showing Sarah's thoughts on the marriage. UJ
  14. Yes if you add a bunch of great great greats in there. She knew she was related to one of the Presidents of the church through one of his plural wives and wanted to make it the basis of a historical figure essay. The hard part is all of the official biographies of President Snow on LDS.org don't list background on any of his plural wives so she had to go to secondary sources. As you can imagine this marriage in particular has been one of the examples of negativity around polygamy. UJ