Quite accidentally, I once stumbled upon evidence of something about teenagers in the "Wild West" - insight I wasn't seeking and was initially challenged to understand.

My Nevada state historic preservation office was supporting the computerization of the 1880 Federal Manuscript Census for Virginia City (site of one of the richest gold and silver discoveries in history). That census was the first year to give information on location, and I was hoping that we could gain insight to identify archaeological sites that would fit various themes, teased out from the data. We started with the core of the community because the addresses were the best identified in the primary source. We had over ten thousand individuals, providing a healthy, statistical group.

I worked up "population pyramids" - graphs that describe how the population was distributed by age and gender, for the population as a whole, but also for various ethnic and other groups. An abnormality immediately stuck out, namely that there were far more early teenage boys than girls. Nationally, the two groups appeared nearly equal - with teenage girls being slightly more numerous than their male counterparts. So why were teenage boys more numerous in this famous outpost of the mining "Wild West"???

The entire database was eventually completed: it's available at this site so you, too, can conduct research on teenagers in the Wild West! With all the data, I once again looked at the population pyramids for Virginia City, and I saw that the imbalance of more numerous teenage boys had disappeared - the demographically profile of the community was suddenly closer to the national average, at least when it came to teenagers. But this meant that teenage girls were more numerous in the outlying areas, and teenage boys were more numerous in the core of the community.

So what was going on? Why were families with younger teenage girls living on the outskirts and families with younger teenage boys living in neighborhoods closer to the core of town?

By 1880, the twenty-year "bonanza" that made Virginia City internationally famous had begun to wane. The 1880 census documents a community where many people were out of work for many of the previous months. Many were leaving the community, looking for better prospects, but many others were hanging on as best they could: the mines of Virginia City was famous for bursting back to life, and those who were living nearby were the first to benefit from the surging economy, so there was every reason to remain in the area, hoping for better times.

Virginia City is well documented by Sanborn-Perris Fire Insurance Maps, which identity all the structures in the community so insurance brokers could estimate the price of insurance policies for the various addresses. The outskirts of town was documented as being littered with "mountain cabins" - structures that were too humble to justify the purchase of an insurance policy. These maps, the census data, and various journals and other primary sources give us the insight to our question about young teenagers in the "Wild West."

It seems that families with teenage boys were better able to sustain themselves in the good housing closer to the shopping and employment options - houses with running water and sometimes indoor toilets. Families with teenage girls were forced to abandon the better housing and to retreat to undesirable "mountain cabins," far from community resources including running water.

The reason behind this disparity rests in the role teenagers could play for the economic vitality of their families. Recollections of life in Virginia City describe teenage boys as scouring the community for rags and metal to be sold to rag pickers and the junkyard. Boys were also able to earn money by running errands, delivering messages, and various other menial tasks.

Teenage girls in 1880 were hampered by the Victorian-era ideal of the time, societal restraint that prevented "young ladies" from scurrying about town performing menial tasks that would earn money.

In good years, those young boys who earned money likely kept it to themselves, but in times of desperation, boys could play a very real role in assisting their families, making it possible for families to sustain themselves even when there was widespread unemployment. Boys were an asset economically. Sadly, teenage girls were merely more mouths to feed and were not able to become economic assets in the local depression of 1880, and their families paid the price.

An accident in data collection led to an opportunity to gain an image of life in 1880 in the West. I described this research and the insight I gained in an article that appeared in the Mining History Journal, appearing in 1996.

Many of you may know that I am a massive fan of Gluckel of Hameln, a 17-18th century Jewish female businesswoman and memoirist (the first we know of to write memoirs in Yiddish) whose memoir is one of very few books that both my mom and I have enjoyed (we have extremely differing tastes). Often, one of the things that can make a memoir appealing is the realization of how DIFFERENT life was for people in the past and being able to get into their own heads about it, and Gluckel's description of her teen years is perhaps one of the clearest examples.

Background: Gluckel was born in Hamburg in 1646/7 (it's unclear, as she only gives the Hebrew date, 5407) and, after the expulsion of Hamburg's Jewish community when she was three years old, grew up in the neighboring town of Altona, then under Danish rule, before returning to Hamburg at age ten.

To quote her memoir, written for her children as a way to commemorate their father (who had died when the youngest children were still babies), whom she had loved dearly:

"My father had me betrothed when I was a girl of barely twelve, and less than two years later I married. ...The marriage took place in Hameln... [and] immediately afterwards my parents returned home and left me- I was a child of scarcely fourteen- alone with strangers in a strange world. That it did not go hard with me I owed to my new parents who made my life a joy. Both dear and godly souls, they cared after me better than I deserved. What a man he was, my father-in-law, like one of God's angels!Hameln, everyone knows what it is compared to Hamburg; taken by itself, it is a dull shabby hole. And there I was- a carefree child whisked in the flush of youth from parents, friends and everyone I knew, from a city like Hamburg plump into a back-country town where lived only two Jews.Yet I thought nothing of it, so much I delighted in the piety of my father-in-law. At three in the morning he arose, and in his Sabbath coat seated himself close to my bedroom and sing-songed his prayers; and then I forgot about Hamburg.

There are a few interesting things about this account:

• Literally nothing is said about Gluckel's life in between her betrothal and her marriage, which is basically the only time that she could have been said to have fallen into a stage of life such as "teenagehood." In fact, previously in the book there is almost no description of Gluckel's childhood, either, with her choosing to focus on the story of her parents and on political occurrences where they impinged on her life (the expulsion from and gradual reentry to Hamburg, the war between Denmark and Sweden, etc).
• In this discussion of her marriage and her time living in her parents-in-law's home, Gluckel's husband, Chayim, is not mentioned once (he is mentioned later in the chapter, when he decides that they should move to Gluckel's parents' home in Hamburg). In fact, when describing Chayim's family, Gluckel deliberately says that she will not talk about him now, but will focus more on him later- which she does. However, it's noteworthy that the specific memories she has of her marriage and time in Hameln are about how welcome her parents-in-law, especially her father-in-law, made her. She was still a child, and her memories come from how her "new parents" made her feel welcome as part of the family; a sentiment that I've seen several other times (sometimes in its absence) from other accounts by people who married as children.
• It's also worth noting that we do not know exactly how old Gluckel's new husband is. We do know that he was young (Gluckel later describes them as "children"), though not how young, but this was not a foregone conclusion; while it was not uncommon for young boys in their teens to enter these arranged marriages (and in fact Gluckel married her own sons off at young ages just as she did her daughters), young girls could also find themselves marrying much older men. In fact, Gluckel's own parents were many years apart; her father had been a widower after fifteen years of marriage when he had married Gluckel's teenaged, orphaned mother in an arranged marriage meant to provide her and her own widowed mother with financial security (though Gluckel describes the marriage as a happy one).

1/2

Wrote a short story to help convey the information. The story contains some strong language and violence.

“Bleda, take your brother with you. Don’t come back without dinner.”

From atop his horse, Bleda crossed his arms and glared at his approaching father. “Etla doesn’t have a-” he started say to when he noticed his runty brother trialing behind their father, broadly smiling atop his very first, scrawny pony. Bleda’s friends, loitering in a circle atop their own horses, howled in laughter. Bleda frowned. He opened his mouth to speak.

“You will,” their father said with a tone that ended the discussion.

Great. His first hunt without one of father’s henchmen and he was already regaled to babysitting.

Etla strode up on his pony, bouncing with each stride much higher than he needed to. The grin on his face made Bleda want to turn his bow on him right then and there. Grabbing the reigns, he turned his horse away, “let’s go.”

“So~, Etla, you ever shoot before?” jibed Mund, Bleda’s all too fat friend. He pointed at the un-strung bow tied to the pony’s saddle.

The others roared in laughter.

“Yes! I’m the best in the city!”

That did not help calm Bleda’s friends but it did deepen the frown on his face.

“Yeah?” said Mund, “let me see it.” He rode up next to Etla.

Etla unfastened the bow and fetched the string from the quiver on his right hip. He hooked the string to the bottom of the bow. Then, by snuggly wedging the bottom of the bow between his left thigh and the neck of the pony, using his right hand he pushed the top of the bow in and easily hooked the other end of the string to the top of the bow.

Bleda rolled his eyes.

Before letting it go, Etla checked the strung bow to make certain it was properly aligned then he tugged on the string near the top of the bow as well as the bottom to remove any kinks. All in good order, he handed it to Mund.

Mund grinned as he took the bow in hand. He looked it over and nodded to Etla’s fine mastery of the most elementary manner in stringing a light bow.

Etla offered Mund one of his arrows but his dismissed it with a wave of his fat hand.

“Too short”, was all Mund said.

Taking one of his own, he notched an arrow on the outside of the bow and, by hooking his thumb over the string and pinching it in place with his index finger, he pulled the arrow back, feeling the hawk feathers brush passed his mouth, until it came to rest just below his right ear.

By chance, a rabbit shot out from under a bush and bounded across their path. Not letting this perfect opportunity pass, Mund took aim, breathed in then out and fired. As the arrow left the bow, Mund snapped his firing finger back, dragging it across his jaw line, and rotated the entire bow in his left hand out and then down, so that the arrow would fly straight and true without obstruction. In a second the arrow arched slightly and cleared forty paces, before thunking into the critter, pinning it to the ground.

“Whoa!” exclaimed Etla.

Murmurs of approval arose from his companions, even Bleda had to admit it was a good shot.

Mund chuckled and handed the bow back to Etla.

Etla unstrung it and put it away.

“Not bad, but it won’t pierce Roman armour. Here, try this.”

Mund took up his own bow and strung it. He checked it and then gave the string a test pull using his bare fingers, his arms flexed. Content, he handed it to Etla.

Taking the bow in hand, it appeared no larger or heavier than his own bow, but he did noticed the limbs were fatter.

Bleda smirked.

Taking the bow in hand, Etla drew an arrow and knocked it. He put on a thumb ring made of antler and drew. The string didn’t budge.

“Whoa.”

The others chuckled.

Etla pulled at the string again, this time with everything he had.

“Ah!”

It barely moved a finger length.

Laughter erupted.

He relaxed the bow, sweat beading from his hat.

Mund grinned. “That’s a real bow.” He took his bow back, unstrung it and tied it back to his saddle. “Now go fetch the pray.”

Etla nodded. Kicking his pony into a canter, he rode ahead.

More laughs.

Leaping off the saddle, Etla further pinned the rabbit’s body to the ground and with his right hand, twisted its neck until it snapped.

Cheers erupted from Bleda’s friends before diving back into laughter.

Etla pulled the arrow from the rabbit and offered the two to Mund. He took the arrow, inspected the head, then cleaned off the blood with a rag before sliding it into his quiver. He rejected the rabbit.

“Keep it. In case that’s all we bring home.” He turned to Bleda, “Hey, Bled, maybe your wife can make him a new hat!”

Bleda guffawed. “I doubt that. Ereka spends all her time hunting and bossing around slaves.”

Mund laughed. “At least she’s pretty. Mine snores like an ox! Sometimes in the night she snorts, and I could swear some miserable trader is herding pigs down the street!”

One of their friends doubled over in his saddle in laughter.

“I’m not lying! We have to sleep in separate tents. It’s too much!”

“Well, you should have chosen a better wife.”

“Huh,” Mund’s grin relaxed, “not all of us are royal kin, my friend. My father chose her for me when I was Etla’s age. I’ve known she would be mine for seven seasons, I had no say in the matter.”

Bleda shrugged, “just get a slave to keep you warm.”

“I bet she’d snore too!” interjected Etla in a high tone that betrayed his youth.

They all fell silent and eyed him.

Mund chuckled politely, “yeah, I bet she would.”

Bleda just wished the scrawny kid would die.