Thursday, January 04, 2007

Age of adulthood in QC through the centuries

Many persons have been asking me what the “age of majority” was in New France (Nouvelle France), aka Lower Canada and Québec ,through the generations since parish registries often indicated whether the spouses were “majeur” (mj) or “mineur” (mn) at the time of their wedding.
After a bit of research, I’ve found the following:

From 1620 to 1783 = 25 years of age
From 1783 to 1972 = 21 years of age
From 1972 to date = 18 years of age