David --
  The one paper I know that deals with this in any detail is:
  James F. Mosher, The history of youthfulo drinking laws: implications for 
current policy. In: Henry Wechsler, ed., Minimum-drinking-age Laws, pp. 11-38.  
Lexington, Mass. Lexington Books, 1980.
  From what I can remember from reading this when Jim was writing it, minimum 
drinking age laws were primarily a post-Repeal concern.
        Robin 

On 2007-12-01, at 22:47, David Fahey wrote:
> Is there any systematic study of minimum drinking age in the USA before
> National Prohibition?  Any comparative dates for other Western countries in
> the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? I assume that in the USA the
> minimum legal drinking age was 21, but I have no evidence for it.  By the
> way, I know that in recent times before the principle of equal rights for
> men and women had been accepted, there sometimes were different minimum ages
> for their drinking (as for their right to marry without parental consent).
>  I vaguely recall that Oklahoma (?) may have set a minimum drinking age for
> men at 21 and for women at 18, paralleling the marriage law.