Linda asks, "at what age, a young woman was considered a spinster". My guess would be 25........and "if" they did marry, stood a better chance of living longer....... Women who married at 15 and gave birth every 10-11 months, looked 50 by the time they were 25, those who survived, because too many died in childbirth, from lack of any medical care or lack of competent medical care. Womens bodies never had a chance to heal after childbirth, and their husbands didn't care.............simple as that. By the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, not so many women died, as before, in childbirth, they began to die, performing abortions on themselves........or having them done by butchers.......and still women suffered the humiliation of being brood mares without any guidance from their Doctors about simple birth control methods...............and without any compassion or support from their husbands..........I guess how many children, a man, fathered was a sign of manhood, but how many wives died while manhood was proven was of no real importance, just bring on another young flower, with a stong back to take care of the orphaned children of the previous wife and hope that she's fertile.......................the hardships and indignities of many of our ancestral mothers were and still are a disgrace..........how they survived, so many of them, is quite remarkable....and yet, we genealogists, have the most difficulty finding out information about the women of our families.................who had little or no identity and certainly "no worth" except how many babies they could birth...........and frequently, their husbands, in their wills left these strong, hardworking mothers.............a bedstead and a feather bed...