Year and Age Married

As I have time on my hands due to the Stay-at-Home order, I decided to do an investigation of age at time of marriage of ancestors and see if how much much variation occurred over time. Having viewed the data for years, I developed a hypothesis that male age at time of marriage was pretty flat, but that female age has increased.  For example, Josef Hawel was 37 years, and his wife Anna was 23.  What the data indicated to me, before graphing is that in most cases males were in or above their mid-twenties at the time of marriage, and at times older.  Before working on genealogy I always tended to assume that the marriage age of my ancestors would have been younger than what I found.  In Bohemia, as in other countries, it was not unusual to see multi-generation households, and the males, as the main breadwinner, probably wanted to be settled in an occupation before marriage in order to support the intended family.  If they were in farming, this could take time as the parent aged out, or they found their own reliable work.

For purposes of the following data I used only ancestor data for which I had fairly accurate date of marriage and births.  That is data verified by birth and marriage records, or family archival data that was verified by other sources, such as other family histories. As I do more archival research, if possible, I may be able to expand the older data set.  For ancestor marriages, I used the first marriage if there were more than one marriage.  For example, even though Viktoria Koblitz, the first wife of Josef Duscheck was not my great great grandmother, I used her, as I believed it gives a better representation of age at marriage. Josef would remarry after the death of his first wife, and that wife, Rosalie, would produce additional children.

I had not been able to figure out how to do a best-fit line of both males and females in the same graph, so I have separate graphs.  The first two graphs show the marriage and age of my mother and father (right side), and then the reliable data I have for their parents, grandparents, etc.  The table does not include marriage of aunts and uncles, or cousin relations.  For all four charts the X axis is year of marriage and the Y axis is age at time of marriage.  The X axis is in fifty year increments starting in 1700, the Y axis is age in five year increments, starting at 0.

Parent, Grandparent, Etc Year of Marriage by Age

The above graph would indicate that female age at time of marriage for our ancestors increased over time.  However, if the case in the early 1700's were removed, I think the best fit line would be flatter.

Parent, Grandparent, Etc Year of Marriage by Age

The second graph shows a slight decrease in male age, but is generally fairly flat, indicating that there was not a significant change in the best fit line.  Overall, the scatter of the age data points shows females were younger than the males, although there were two exceptions.  Family members, can you guess who the second from right marriage would be?

The next two graphs utilize the same ancestors, but expands the pool for twentieth century marriages by using the date of of myself and my siblings by their age and age of their spouse in year of marriage.  The one instance of two marriages by a sibling, to be consistent with our ancestors, the first marriage was used.  

Hovel Children with Ancestor Marriages

The best fit line in this graph shows that female marriage age saw a slight increase over time.  The scatter graph shows that again males tended to be the older partner, although with a couple exceptions in what is a smaller data set.  In other words, you could say the percent of cougars in the marriage saw a slight increase. 

Hovel Children with Ancestor Marriages

The last graph shows a flat line, and the line would be even more flat if the earliest shown marriage were to be removed.  However, the line would probably not show the slight increase, and perhaps a decrease if the older aged male 1990 marriage was removed. 

Nationally, males tend to be older at time of marriage than their partner, and this generally holds true in this example. According to more recent statistics of present time if couples marry at all they tend to marry later.  As more data points for the Hovel family become available that data could be added. 
Generally speaking the marriage ages are fairly consistent for males, and less so for males.  I could run more statistics, but lack the statistical program to do so, and my old fashioned stat skills are just that too old to desire to engage in such an endeavor.

Note on Archival Data:  For the Hovel side, the Trebon Archives represent a good source, but records can be in three languages, and the script, or handwriting changed over time and is difficult to discern. Even trained personnel have many problems with the handwriting particularly when combined with the quality of the written record.  The Zmarsk Archives which contains information on the Duscheck family is much less user friendly than Trebon, has the same, and sometimes more issues, as many records lack the house number for the village and village.  The villages are small and while each village had a chapel, the main church served several villages. I found the house number, where available, invaluable in searching in the Trebon Archives.  I have not been able to locate birth records for the Sweeney side in Ireland, except for Bridget Cleary's birth record.  I have waded through on line data bases and found the birth/baptismal record of Franziska Leindenheimer, but have not yet located her parents.  I have no idea from where the Pitzenberger family originated, nor does anyone who has posted an ancestry of the family online.