Cynthia Rosen filed this interesting report in her Deva Vu column of the Wall Street Journal.

Couples in the U.S. Used to Marry Early,Often and Informally

In a Connecticut village in the 17th century, an unmarried couple moved in together. One day, while out for a stroll, they ran into the local magistrate.

“John Rogers,” the magistrate said, “do you persist in calling this woman your wife?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And Mary, do you really wish this old man to be your husband?”

“Indeed I do.”

“Then by the laws of God and this commonwealth, I pronounce you man and wife…”

Although probably apocryphal, this story reflects the state of marriage in early America: no license, witness, ceremony, often not even a magistrate. Some couples wanted a blessing from church or state, but common-law marriages, men and women behaving as spouses without a formal contract, were both legal and respectable. An 1843 Indiana marriage law stated, “No particular form of ceremony shall be necessary, except that the parties shall declare ... that they take each other as husband and wife.”

Early American settlers adapted traditions imported from England to life on the wide-open plains. A man and woman may have committed themselves to lifelong devotion months, even years, before a circuit judge or preacher happened along. Many couples didn’t wait. In the early Chesapeake region, roughly a third of brides were pregnant.

Females were marriageable at the age of 12, males at 15. But in Hempstead Harbor, N.Y., in 1838, Edward Tappan, 15 years old, married Harriet Allen, who had just celebrated her 11th birthday. In Green Hollow, Maine, in 1828, a Mr. Williams, age 87, wed Polly Candle, 14.

After marrying, most couples had a powerful incentive to sustain their connubial enterprise: The labor of both was crucial to their survival. Further cementing the bond, by law a wife’s personal property belonged to her husband; if she left him, she took nothing. Even so, some early settlers, both women and men, sought divorces. But death, not strife, ended most marriages. In the 17th century, one of the spouses, usually the woman, was likely to be dead in seven years.

By the 19th century, state legislators were realizing that people who married themselves could—and would—also divorce themselves, leaving a trail of destitution. Lawmakers passed a hodgepodge of bills setting the terms of the marriage contract. In most states, common-law marriage was gradually abolished. Before Americans could marry, they had to ask the government’s permission.

Thirty states prohibited people with physical or mental disabilities—epileptics or the “feeble-minded, idiotic, imbecilic or insane”—from marrying. (In many states, women over 45 were exempted from this rule.) Four states disqualified paupers or inmates in public institutions for the indigent. Washington and North Dakota didn’t issue marriage licenses to people suffering from advanced tuberculosis.

Most states banned interracial marriage; white citizens of Florida could not marry anyone of “one-eighth or more Negro blood.” California’s white residents couldn’t legally marry “a Negro, mulatto, Mongolian or member of the Malay race.” Nevada’s racial restrictions were all-inclusive—a white man or woman could not marry “a person of the black, brown, yellow or red races.” In Mississippi, the penalty for interracial marriage was life in prison.

Slaves could not legally marry. How, legislators argued, could property itself enter into a contract? Nonetheless, slaves got married, “till death or distance do you part,” as their preachers sometimes said. Mormon polygamy, deemed “inhumane,” was finally banned by the Supreme Court in 1879.

If marriage law became a thicket of red tape, divorce was a jungle. In South Carolina, divorce was prohibited for any reason. But in most states, a man or woman could petition the legislature for divorce—a long, expensive and often futile exercise. Grounds for divorce were narrow and literal: adultery, drunkenness, desertion. Some states didn’t allow the divorced, especially the “guilty” ones, to remarry while their former spouses were alive.

State divorce laws were so different—and so often contested—that an exasperated U.S. Supreme Court justice wrote, “If there is one thing the people are entitled to expect from their lawmakers, it’s rules that will enable them to tell whether they are married, and if so, to whom.”

Not surprisingly, couples often fled to states with the most lenient divorce rules. In the 19th century, Indiana was a favorite. Since then, except for a few brief periods in the 20th century, America’s divorce rate has steadily marched upward. In 1880, one in 21 marriages ended in divorce; by 1916, one of every nine couples divorced.

Today, a state’s marriage law contains dozens of technicalities defining who may and may not marry. In Arizona, for example, first cousins can’t marry unless both are at least 65 years old. If one is under 65, however, they may marry “upon approval of any superior court judge in the state if proof has been presented to the judge that one of the cousins is unable to reproduce.”