A researcher commented: < His marriage to Sarah is announced in 1897. Assuming they married when they were around 20 (??), perhaps he (or she) was born around 1877.> The median age of first marriage has varied quite a bit over the years. Most of us today think the normal median age of marriage for men is 19-20 and for women is 18-19 because that was the experience of the years 1940-1970. Those young marriages were also typical a century earlier, but in the intervening period, marriages were much later. A median marriage at the turn of the 20th century might have involved a 23-year old woman and a 26-year old man, and those averages stayed high through the roaring 20s and the depression. Of course, this is just a statistic. Every statistic includes both conformers and outliers. Knowing where the midpoint on the bell-shaped curve might fall tells us nothing about where a particular ancestor might be; it only tells us where our chances are best. Bert Herbert Lazerow Professor of Law, U. of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park, San Diego CA 92110 (619)260-4597, fax 619-260-2230