Another element to keep in mind is expressed in the case of one of my ancestors. My gggrandfather, I recently learned, was married more than once. For the early settlers, mortality rates were relatively high for women giving birth. It was not uncommon for the farmers, who had a farm to run and mouths to feed, to take on a new wife in a time frame that we today might find a distastefully short mourning period for the previous wife. Learning this of my gggrandfather opened up a whole new vista of relatives that I would otherwise never known of. It does however, also shed light on what my elder aunts and uncles meant when they talked of the "feudin cousins". >From: MaureenBatty@aol.com >Reply-To: FERMANAGH-L@rootsweb.com >To: FERMANAGH-L@rootsweb.com >Subject: Re: [FERMANAGH] Age of Marriage, Starting Families >Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 16:00:34 EDT >MIME-Version: 1.0 >Received: from hotmail.com ([65.54.237.47]) by hotmail.com with Microsoft >SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.4905); Wed, 29 May 2002 13:02:56 -0700 >Received: from lists2.rootsweb.com ([63.92.80.32]) by hotmail.com with >Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.4905); Wed, 29 May 2002 13:02:10 -0700 >Received: (from slist@localhost)by lists2.rootsweb.com (8.10.1/8.10.1) id >g4TK0g513857;Wed, 29 May 2002 14:00:42 -0600 >Resent-Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 14:00:42 -0600 >X-Original-Sender: MaureenBatty@aol.com Wed May 29 14:00:41 2002 >Message-ID: <a2.263ffc5f.2a268d62@aol.com> >Old-To: FERMANAGH-L@rootsweb.com >X-Mailer: AOL 7.0 for Windows UK sub 52 >Resent-Message-ID: <SL_2LB.A.9XD.pNT98@lists2.rootsweb.com> >Resent-From: FERMANAGH-L@rootsweb.com >X-Mailing-List: <FERMANAGH-L@rootsweb.com> archive/latest/1896 >X-Loop: FERMANAGH-L@rootsweb.com >Precedence: list >Resent-Sender: FERMANAGH-L-request@rootsweb.com >Return-Path: FERMANAGH-L-request@rootsweb.com >X-OriginalArrivalTime: 29 May 2002 20:02:11.0217 (UTC) >FILETIME=[B815C010:01C2074B] > >There are two answers to this question. The average age for a man was 25/26 >yrs and 21yrs for a girl and the first baby usually came along nine months >later.This is a good way of ascertaining the marriage date of a couple if >you >have a birth certificate for the child. Where there was emigration it must >be >remembered that the family had to find the money and this probably was not >easy but it was done on the basis that the Son or daughter were going away >to make a better life for themselves and marriage was postponed so that >there >would not be the encumbrance of young children. > > But, many of the male species married much later and to much younger >women. >They waited for 'The Mammy' to die and then married a young woman to keep >them in the manner to which they had become accustomed.ie. be waited on >hand >and foot. > >Maureen > > >==== FERMANAGH Mailing List ==== >To unsubscribe from a this list, use this address and type in unsubscribe >and send: Action is executed by mailbot. >Fermanagh-L-request@rootsweb.com _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.