Why did people back then marry at such a young age?

[Charleston]

I personally think it's because they had such a short life expectancy back then, that they wanted to start living their lives as soon as possible. Or maybe that they wanted to start a larger family as soon as possible.

[John]

they married at such a young age becauause of two reasons. the birth rate was so low so they need to have as many babies as possible and to do that they need to be married at a young age. the other reason was the nursing years where not nearly as great as they are now because back then people may not like past the (now )young age of 40!

so you need to have lots of kids and quickly.

[Naomi]

I agree with John. i think marrying when a person is in a such a young age is mainly to provide the family with an heir possibly in the future and also because the life expectancies was around 30-40 years where as now its around 80. Or something like that.

[Andrew]

As my fellow classmates said, they married at an early eage for a few reasons. One reason was because the birth and death rate was very low, which caused there to be fewer people in families. People died as young as 30, so they wanted to start their adulthood early at about 14 years old. As time went on, the birth and death rate grew, and so did the age of people who got married.