Wrong Age on the Marriage License: 1932 Marriage of Seventeen Year-olds

 

This guest post is from Regent Law 2L and Family Law student, Will Furr:

 

Four months after my great-grandparents marriage in January 1932 at age seventeen across the border in South Carolina, their first child, my great aunt, was born in May 1932 in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. From the perspective of 2022, it appears on its face like they might have been dodging stricter rules for marriage in North Carolina by going to South Carolina to get married. Is that true?

Under recently passed laws in North Carolina, marriage of 16 and 17 year olds requires consent from a parent or guardian; such persons can only be married to someone four years older than their age. (N.C.G.S Section 51-2.)

South Carolina Code Section 20-1-250 allows 16 and 17 year olds to get married only if they obtain the consent of the parent or guardian with whom they live.

So in January 1932, my great-grandparents were married in Chester, South Carolina. On that day, they were both seventeen years old. They were born after January 1914 according to the birthdates they gave on their Social Security number applications and that appear on their death certificates.

However, their marriage license says that my great-grandfather was 19 years old at the time. Also, my great-grandmother was listed as 18 years old. What explains the discrepancy in ages?

Another clue: the words "In presence of father" and "Father's consent" appear near the age given for my great-grandfather.

Before 1923, the legal age of marriage in North Carolina for males was sixteen and for females was fourteen. (North Carolina Code of 1927, § 2494, Editor's Note.) In 1923, a new requirement was created: that a female over fourteen and under sixteen years of age could be married only if one of her parents (or person standing in loco parentis) gave written consent to the marriage. (North Carolina Code of 1927, § 2494.)

South Carolina's marriageable age laws followed common law traditions. (See State v. Ward, 204 S. C. 210, 28 S. E. 2d 785 (1944), SCJUR BIGAMY § 30, Code of Laws of South Carolina 1932 Section 8556.)

My ancestors do not seem to have been required by the laws of that time period to leave North Carolina and go to South Carolina to get married. Their motive for changing their ages or getting parental consent once they were in South Carolina are not immediately apparent. The best explanation I can think of is that going to South Carolina was the easiest way to avoid any scrutiny on the marriage from their local community in North Carolina.  Nonetheless, I am very glad they got married, and I now see that they likely did it all to protect the children. 

(Blog Editor’s note: That is honorable indeed.)