Bill, There was no legal age for marriage because there was no law that required marriages to be registered in state or county. Marriage was considered to be a matter of concern to the family, not the government. It might be added that such attitudes help to explain why SC was considered the most conservative of all states until Utah came along. Here is an article that I wrote for the York County Genealogical and Historical Society's Quarterly because there were so many questions about the matter of marriage, birth and death records and where they could be located: BIRTH, MARRIAGE, &DEATH RECORDS The state of South Carolina kept no records of births or deaths before January 1, 1915 when the South Carolina Bureau of Vital Statistics was created. And the state has no record of marriages before 1950 (but the counties do have marriage records between 1911-1950). The Bureau’s address is Bureau of Vital Statistics, State Board of Health, Sims Building, Columbia, SC 29201. The state of South Carolina did not require the recording of marriages until July 1, 1911. They were issued in the counties. In York County the task of recording marriages was given to the probate judge. In 1911 the probate judge was L. R. Williams. He issued the first York County marriage license to Lathern Brown McFadden and Mollie Albright of Rock Hill. Until July 1, 1950 the record of the marriage was preserved only in the county in which the marriage occurred. There was no state record. After July 1, 1950, the state of South Carolina centralized all of the marriage records by placing them in the Bureau of Vital Statistics, a division of the State Board of Health. The Bureau of Vital Statistics was not created until 1915 and then kept only a record of births and deaths. The state did not require a record of births and deaths before January 1, 1915 and did not centralize the records until July 1, 1950 at which time they became official state records. For many years it was very easy to get married and impossible to get divorced. South Carolina was the last state in the union to permit divorce. It was not until 1950 that divorces were allowed and not until July 1, 1962, that the Bureau of Vital Statistics began keeping a record of divorces. Common law marriages (where a man and woman live together openly as man and wife) have always been considered lawful marriages. The largest collection of Marriage and Death Notices is at the South Caroliniana Library on the University of South Carolina campus in Columbia. It is far from being inclusive. It is unfortunate that South Carolina did not follow the example of North Carolina and keep vital statistics from the beginning of statehood.) Newspapers did publish some marriage notices, or "hymeneals" but these account for only a few of the marriages. A few churches, or their pastors, may have kept records but few have been preserved. Historically, South Carolina has treated births, marriages, and deaths as private family matters of no concern to the state unless these events also were pertinent to other matters such as marriage settlements that dealt with titles to certain properties held by the woman. Marriage settlements, both prenuptual and postnuptual are recorded with the Secretary of State (records in the State Archives) and are usually in the form of a trust designed to protect the wife’s property or her inheritable property. Records of births, marriages and deaths were kept in Charleston by the Church of England and after the Revolution were kept by the Episcopal Church, the successor of the Church of England, until the 1850s. But York County had no Church of England congregation at all and few Episcopalians at any time. The Presbyterian and Methodists seem not to have kept these records in the pre-Civil War period. Flint Hill Baptist Church in Fort Mill township is a notable exception, but, even there, marriages and deaths are recorded sporadically and births not at all. Baptisms were recorded only by name with no age attached. The lack of official birth, marriage and death records has made cemetery listings extremely important. Tombstones, along with family Bible records and newspaper accounts remain our best sources of information. Louise Pettus PS: As you have probably discovered by now, practicing genealogy in South Carolina is a real challenge! When you add the ravages of Sherman's army in South Carolina (burned all the estate papers, including the wills, in Lancaster County, for example) and the exodus of so many citizens for the west (cotton quickly leached potash from the soil and there were no commercial sources for replacement) to the lack of official birth, marriage and death records, it takes persistence plus the generosity of the fortunate few who have private records to get anywhere at all.