Following the American Revolution, state legislators enacted a number of new age-based laws to legally define adulthood and citizenship at the age of eighteen or twenty-one years old. These laws were passed despite the fact that forms of civil registration, such as government issued birth certificates, were not established until the late nineteenth century. Age was a logical way to designate rights because it operated as an equalizer. Regardless of one’s background, the age of twenty-one, for example, was a status everyone could eventually attain. This reality of early American life—of either not knowing one’s exact age or having no definitive way to prove it—both hindered and benefited citizens as they navigated the privileges that had been assigned age-minimums through law. One important effect of age appearing more regularly in early republican legislation, then, was that Americans had more incentive to lie about their stage in life than ever before. To get around legal restrictions surrounding consent, young people frequently lied about their age in order to marry, enlist in the military, or enter into labor contracts. Legal adults also falsified their age in attempts to reduce their culpability in criminal suits or liability for contracts.
One illustrative example of this can be founded in the 1850 North Carolina murder trial, State v. Elijah Arnold. According to court records, Elijah “appeared… to be a small boy,” but his exact age could not be ascertained. The defense appealed the case to the state Supreme Court and argued that Elijah was “under the age of presumed capacity” and that it should be up to the State to “prove that he was over the age, or, if under it, that he had such knowledge of right and wrong, as would render him responsible for the homicide." However, justices “held the onus of proof lie on the prisoner as to his age.” Unable to prove he was under the age of fourteen, Elijah was convicted of the murder and sentenced as an adult would be. While Elijah’s actual age is not known, State v. Elijah Arnold illustrates how individuals could use the ambiguity of chronological age to in efforts to take advantage of culpability laws meant to protect minors.
So how was age proven in the early republic? Baptismal records, family bibles, informal community and family recollections as well as legal affidavits all appear in the early American historical record as having served the purpose of “proving” an individual’s age. But more often than you’d think, authority figures assigned an age based on how a person looked. Especially when that person did not have access to any of the above to formally “prove” their age. Consequently, descriptions of appearance in relation to suspected or asserted age come up repeatedly in both institutional and court records.