Family Life in England and America, 1690–1820, vol 2 by Rachel Cope Amy Harris Jane Hinckley

Author:Rachel Cope, Amy Harris, Jane Hinckley [Rachel Cope, Amy Harris, Jane Hinckley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781000558821
Google: PfxNEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-11-18T02:46:29+00:00

ADOLPH BENSON, PETER KALM’S TRAVELS IN NORTH AMERICA (1770)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003113065-23

Adolph Benson, Peter Kalm's Travels in North America: The English Version of 1770 (New York: Wilson-Erickson, 1937), pp. 138, 211-12, 223-5.

Marriage practices varied greatly from region to region and religion to religion. However, as Peter Kalm points out in this selection, laws about consent trumped other considerations in colonial America. What constituted consent, at which age people were old enough to consent to marriage, and the reach of parental power fluctuated over time and differed from colony to colony. Massachusetts, for example, passed laws in the late seventeenth century that made parental consent for marriage almost an absolute and Pennsylvania passed similar legislation in the early eighteenth century.1 Simultaneously, the colonies had differences of opinions about age of consent for marriage. Was it as early as eight (as it had been in medieval law)? Or twelve (for girls) and fourteen (for boys) as it had been under canon law for centuries? By the late eighteenth century the answer to both of those questions had become 'no'. Instead, twenty-one (boys) and eighteen (girls) became the generally accepted ages when someone could marry without parental consent. As Holly Brewer has argued, this shift was one component of a long legal change that emphasized 'reason' and rationality instead of status as the important marker for legal consent.2

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.