Mail-Order Brides: The Real Letters and Advertisements

 While researching my notes for The Malpais Bride, I spent a good amount of time reading about real mail order brides and watching some documentaries.

This was a real warning.

We tend to picture something vaguely romantic.  A lonely but kind young man, a beautiful and brave woman, a long train ride, and then a happy ending out west where everything works out.

Sometimes it did.

But the moment you start reading the actual letters and newspaper advertisements, the whole thing becomes a great deal more complicated.

There are some accounts that if a woman came to a town, she could be proposed to on the spot.  Boys were in awe of these women and their footprints left in the mud.  Lonely men could become furious if they were promised brides and fewer women than promised showed up.

Men of all ages would place advertisements in the newspapers stating rather frankly that they were looking for a wife.  They would sometimes describe their land, home, income, livestock, and what kind of women they wanted to marry.  Some of the ads were rather specific and read like job descriptions.

Women would occasionally write back describing themselves and their willingness to travel.  This wasn't silliness or wanting adventure.  This was a calculated decision and a huge risk.  Marriage, even to a stranger could mean land, stability, a house of their own, and freedom from a lifetime of factory work or domestic labor.

But the risks were enormous.

They were agreeing to marry a man they hadn't met, moving to a place they've never seen, possibly living miles away from the nearest town.  Some women married men old enough to be their grandfathers and immediately started having children.

When we look at history, it's easy to turn people into types: the mail order bride, the frontiersman, pioneer women.  But when we start to read their words they stop being types and start to become people again.

Many were lonely.  People were practical.  They were scared and hopeful.  They were trying to build a life with what limited choices they had.

As a writer, when you read stuff like this, you don't just see history.

You start to see stories and then you write those stories.