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Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 1999-11 > 0943217430


From: "Virginia Beck" <>
Subject: Re: Of Full Age
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 12:50:30 -0800


While entering all the data I gathered this summer (two surnames), I was
surprised by how young the people married, and by how common marriages
between cousins were. The FTM program alerts the user to marriages where
one of the partners is 13 or less, and it kicked in quite often. These
families lived in rural areas of KY & VA/WV, and there were relatively few
families in the area in the first generations, so the pool of unrelated
prosective mates was not very large. Two men married Indians. I suppose
the kids were considered "adult" as soon as they reached puberty, which my
Webster's Collegiate tells me is legally considered 12 for girls, and 14 for
boys (a few of my entries were actually that young).
The same surnames appear over and over, (a few of the marriages were
between double first cousins) until the ninth generation, when a number of
the young people began to move to other areas of the country -- mostly from
WV & Eastern KY to OH, Western KY, KS, CO, ND, SD, & CA. Only at this time
do surnames of other ethnic groups begin to appear -- primarily German, but
a few of Scandinavian, Eastern European, Italian & Hispanic origin. Then
the given names begin to reflect the mix, with such incongruities as Ivan
Ferguson and Juanita O'Brien. No wonder we all are so taken with this
research -- it is fascinating. Virginia.

----- Original Message -----
From: Horatio Paul McAfee <>
To: <>
Sent: Saturday, November 20, 1999 6:57 PM
Subject: Of Full Age


> Frontier cabins got awfully small as children matured and modesty began
> to exert its needs. I read somewhere long ago that this simple reality
> was a factor in why many girls married so young.
>
> Horatio Paul McAfee
>
>

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