Sweethearts Of The West: Mailorder brides

By Anna Kathryn Lanier

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! Don't forget to leave a comment and your email for a chance to win FREE BOOKS! All month the Sweethearts of the West will be giving away free books. Today, leave a comment for a chance to win a copy of SALVATION BRIDE, my own mail order bride story.

With the promise of quick riches in the gold mines and free or cheap farm land, men flocked west for freedom and fortune. They left behind women and civilization. At one point in the Washington Territory, men out-numbered women nine to one. PBS.org reports that in 1850, white women were only 3% of the non-native population, with about 800 females to 30,000 males in California mining regions. It was so bad that even the newspapers were lamenting the woeful lack of females. In 1851, the Alta California editor wrote, “We want a emigration of respectable females to California: of rosy-checked ‘down east’ Yankee girls—of stout ‘hoosier’ and ‘badger’ lasses, who shall be wives to our farmers and mechanics, and mothers to a generation of “Yankee Californians.”

It is easy to understand why men wanted a mail-order bride, but why did the women want to take a husband they had never met? Of course, the answers are as varied as the women. However, I think stability and security was the number one reason. Women at that time were still not allowed to own property in most cases. A young, unmarried woman would have a hard time making it alone in the east, as would a widow. To many women the west beckoned with the same call of freedom and riches as it did to the men.

Chris Enss has a wonderful book, HEARTS WEST: True Stories of Mail Order Brides on the Frontier. I’ll be referencing her book for this lecture. Ms. Enss explains that even in the west, there was a “need for some method of honorable introduction between the sexes.” From the 1870’s through the 1890’s, this came in the form of Matrimonial News, a periodical “to which many unattached men and women subscribed…. It was printed in San Francisco, California, and in Kansas City, Missouri. It was issued once a week and the paper’s editors proclaimed that the intent of the material was the happiness of its readers.” During the paper’s three decades of operation, it is estimated that over 2,600 couples corresponded, exchanged photos and married.

To avoid publishing the names and addresses of those posting ads, numbers were used instead. Ms. Enss reprinted several ads taken from the January 8, 1887 Kansas City edition of the Matrimonial News.

241 – I am a widow, aged 28, have one child, height 64 inches, blue eyes, weight 125 pounds, loving disposition. I am poor; would like to hear from honorable men from 30 to 40 years old; working men preferred.

228 – If there is a gentlemen of honor and intelligence between the ages of 35 and 50 who wants a genuine housekeeper, let him write to this number. I am a widow, 34 years old, weight 110, 4 feet 5 inches in height: am a brunette and have very fine black hair.

292 – A girl who will, honest, true and not sour; a nice little cooing dove and will to work in flour.

245 – I am fat, fair, and 48, 5 feet high. Am a No. 1 lady, well fixed with no encumbrance; am in business in city, but want a partner who lives in the West. Want an energetic man that has some means, not under 40 years of age, weight not less than 180. Of good habits. A Christian gentleman preferred.

In the Matrimonial News, May 1873:

I am 33 years of age, and as regards looks can average with most men. I am looking for a lady to make her my wife, as I am heartily tired of bachelor life. I desire a lady not over 28 or 30 years of age, not ugly, well educated and musical. Nationality makes no difference, only I prefer not to have a lady of Irish birth. She must have at least $20,000.

A lady, 23, tall, fair and good looking, without means, would like to hear from a gentleman of position wanting a wife. She is well educated, accomplished, amiable, and affectionate.

One successful marriage was that between William Silbaugh and Phoebe Harrington. Both were born in West Virginia, but William went west due to poor health, ending up in Idaho. Once he decided he needed a wife, he sent a letter to his aunt, asking her to “shop for a woman for him, and to send the candidate on once she met his aunt’s approval.” His aunt chose Phoebe, a seventeen-year-old domestic servant, who felt going west was the only way to improve her lot in life. Less than hour after meeting face to face, they married.

William had a homestead in Magic Valley, and set up household with his new bride in a tiny, two-room shack with no windows. There she blessed him with seven children as he struggled to make the farm work. However, the soil in the poorly named valley was not good for growing, as it turned out. After working for 25 years to make something of his farm, William finally moved his family north to a ranch near Salmon. There, the family was finally “living the life William had dreamed of providing them.” After 47 years of marriage, William was killed in a car accident in 1958. Phoebe lived to be 84 and died sixteen years after her husband’s death.

Another mail order bride also came with the approval of the groom’s relative. Rachel Kahn was sent from Russia to marry Abraham Calof after she passed the test of patience his sister her put her through. But Rachel’s expectations of a better life in America weren't fulfilled as she’d hoped. Abraham met Rachel in New York, as she got off a ship at Ellis Island. Together, they traveled by train to his home in North Dakota. Though she knew life would be hard on the plains, she was not prepared for the site that met her in the form of Abraham’s family, dirty and dressed in rags, the men shoeless and faces weathered and forlorn. Worse were the living arrangements—a 12 by 14 foot shack with one bed, table, two benches and a stove. Not so bad, except the unmarried couple would share it with his parents, brother, sister-in-law and their two children. Rachel wondered if she really had traded up in life.

As they awaited their marriage, the couple came to know each other better on long walks. Abraham reassured her the living arrangements were only temporary and would improve. The wedding took place in November 1894. Her joyous day turned to bitterness when she realized they would not be spending their wedding night alone, but with several other people and the livestock. She cried herself to sleep that night.

The family continued to struggle, even as they added to their family, several girls and boys. Bit by bit, though, as the wheat fields prospered, so did the family. Just when they thought their luck would turn for good, a very large and promising crop was destroyed by a hail and rain storm just before the harvest. Some of the local families did not recover from this disaster, but the Colafs did.

By 1910, their homestead was several times larger than the 160 acres they’d started with. They’d also begun to break horses. They were very involved in their Jewish faith and their community. Abraham introduced new farming ideas to the local farmers and the family helped build the first school in the area.

The couple was married for more than fifty years and had nine children. They lived on their North Dakota farm for more than twenty years, after which they moved to St. Paul, Minnesota. He opened a dry goods store and she raised money for charities. In 1936, she began writing her life story. “Rachel called their marital and pioneer experience ‘a life worth living.’”

Mail order brides have interested me for some time, to the point I wrote about one in SALVATION BRIDE, published through The Wild Rose Press and available for the nook and kindle.