Wild West Dating & Mail Order Brides： Tinder of the Old West
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Summary
In this episode, we take a deep dive into the widely-practiced practice of male-order brides in the Old West. We review firsthand accounts of what men were looking for in a partner, and how they valued them.
Transcript
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Hello, Simone! Today we are going to go into an interesting deep dive to learn more about
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dating in the Old West. We are going to look at the widely practiced concept of
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male order brides in the Old West, talk about why people opted into it, why they did it,
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review a lot of firsthand accounts of what men were looking for back then and what women were
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looking for to understand what they valued in a partner and how that has changed in society.
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Because I think that's something to go back to, like different cultural periods, to one,
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better understand our own ancestry, because I think a lot of Americans have forgotten what
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their great-grandparents valued, what they were looking for in partners, etc. And we, through
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seeing different cultures, we can be like, oh, this is a different way to relate to marriage and
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sexuality. And a lot of people would ask if you're like, really? Like women would do this. They would
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like get in a carriage and like drive out to meet with someone in the middle of nowhere in like the
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Old West. Like, weren't they afraid of like being turned into like a sex slave and like chained up
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in the basement or something? And it's like, well, actually, there wasn't that much risk of that
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because that was sort of like a strictly like worse value proposition for a guy than a wife.
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Sex slaves are very high maintenance, especially if you're living on the frontier.
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Yeah, they're not doing that much work, which is, I mean, I guess you could force them to work.
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There was like that tragic story recently of the, well, now man, but who had been trapped in his
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house for a long period of time? And he was occasionally let out to clean the house. So
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he did do some housework, but then otherwise, that's strictly less, like even if they were
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just cleaning the house, that's strictly less than you can get out of a dedicated wife
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who like you, you dedicated part of your time to, right? You know, like you get a lot more labor
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out of her just by being nice. So we'll get to like the dynamics of this. Although there was an
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instance where a woman did get married to a nice guy only to realize shortly after her wedding,
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and we'll go into this case in a bit, that he had robbed her stagecoach on the way over,
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not knowing it was his future wife. And he was just on the lowdown, also a stagecoach robber.
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Well, he was nice about it too. He didn't know it was going to be his future wife and he let
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He's like, I can just imagine his face when she arrives. Like, oh.
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But before we get into all of that, I want to go into some other crazy stuff I learned about
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So we're going to start with Arbuckle's Coffee Coupons and Rings. In late 1800s,
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Arbuckle's Coffee was a dominant brand across the American frontier, especially among cowboys,
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homesteaders, and minors. Coffee was a staple and Arbuckle stood out by including redeemable
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coupons or premiums in their three-pound bags. These weren't just throwaways. Think of them
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as loyalty points. Customers collected them to train for goods like kitchenware, razors,
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and notably finger rings. The rings, often simple bands or modestly adorned, were marketed as
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keepsakes or engagement symbols. The claim of 80,000 weddings a year was, was one of their,
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their things. So the Old West, there was a common practice of you would buy. Now the reason this
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brand of coffee became popular in the Old West first is they built a way to seal it so it stayed
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fresh longer so they could ship it further. And so then the next thing they did is they built a system
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where you would get like this coupon book that you could use to buy things. But one of the most
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popular items in the coupon book was wedding rings. And so people would save up for various
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wedding rings that they would buy with coupons.
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That is, that is, I mean, that makes sense. It sounds honestly like buying a wedding ring with
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your credit card points today, which a lot of people do. I bet if I log on to our credit card
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This year, never one to rest on his laurels, Arbuckle next came up with a voucher plan.
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He printed a coupon bearing his signature on each package. A given number of coupons would
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earn the bearer one of a hundred items available in Arbuckle's catalog, the wishlist book of its
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day. Items included everything from a toothbrush to a double action revolver. A young man could even
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order a golden wedding ring for his lady love. His lady love.
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I love that you could be killed by a gun that somebody got with coupons in the Old West.
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Not only was the coffee a lifesaver to those early Westerners, so was the packaging.
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Coffee was shipped with sturdy Maine fur crates, 100-pound bags to the lot. The crates were used
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to make furniture, coffins, and cradles. The Navajo Indians even used the wood to make
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a Hogan's, and trademark flying angel that embezzled each package of coffee adorned many
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I thought you'd get excited about this. I was like, that's a cool little anecdote.
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Yeah, hold on. I want to see if I can find pictures of these books.
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I could find pictures of the books, but not the rings.
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Well, I mean, I imagine the rings looked pretty, you know.
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So a common courting custom in the Old West was something called courting mirrors.
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Courting mirrors were another quirky tradition more common in rural America, including the Old
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West during the 1800s. They were small handheld mirrors, often four to eight inches long,
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with wooden or metal frames, sometimes carved or painted with simple designs like hearts
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or flowers. A sooner gifted one to a woman he was courting. And it wasn't just about vanity.
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Mirrors were pricey and were where on the frontier were glass was a luxury. Giving one signaled
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thoughtfulness and investment, like gifting a high-end gadget today. The mirror had symbolic
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weight too. It was intimate. A personal item tied to appearance and identity, suggesting trust
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in admiration. Some stories claimed that women used them to quote-unquote reflect on their
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suitor's intentions, although that likely was romanticized folklore. Practically, a mirror was
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useful for a woman living in a sod house or cabin with few possessions. In some cases, couples exchanged
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mirrors with the man keeping a smaller one as a memento, reinforcing mutual commitment.
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That's sweet. They both would bring a mirror and the man would just keep whichever one happened to
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be smaller. These mirrors weren't mass-produced like Arbuckle's rings. They were often handmade or
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bought from peddlers, making each one unique. By the 1880s, catalog companies like Sears began offering
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cheap versions, but earlier a mirror might cost a day's wages. Serious for a farmhand or cowboy.
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Their popularity waned by the 1900s as manufactured goods flooded markets, but they left a mark in
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diaries and family heirlooms, often passed down as quote, the mirror he gave her, end quote.
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That's so also sweet. And yes, I checked in 100% we could buy a wedding ring with credit card
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points. Even on Etsy, you can now like convert credit card points to an Etsy gift card.
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So I love it. And I, and I love the, the, the, this, this mirror idea. It's actually really
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sweet. And practical. I love this mixture of practicality and tied to your identity, symbolic.
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I should also like, take care of yourself. Like girl, like a vacuum, like you look rough.
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Here's the evidence of mirror. But, and it's important to understand how little people owned
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back then when we were going back through my family diaries at that time. And it was like my great,
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great grandfather talking about being raised in the episode. It's called people used to like their
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parents. That's the, it's a really good episode. I think one of the best we've ever done because it
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was going over his diaries. And at one point he catalogs everything he owns and everything he
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owns was like a dirt roof shed that they slept in an outhouse and then a weaving loom, a loom
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and, and apparently some pigs. And that was it. I mean, pigs are, looms are useful too.
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That all sounds good. Yeah. Yeah. But I was, it's, it's interesting to me that today,
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like, if you thought about making a catalog of everything that your family owns, it would not
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be like a four thing catalog. It's not like, well, we've got some pigs and I've got a loom
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and an outhouse. Well, and in just a few years, you'd buy a house on a catalog. So
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I don't know. Catalogs really saw this amazing. Catalogs were the pre-internet internet.
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Yeah. Like Sears, you know, you can, in my hometown of Dallas, you can drive around and some of the old
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Sears houses that were bought from a catalog are still standing in, in neighborhoods that I lived
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in. Yeah. And they're, they're nice houses too. Like I've seen YouTube tours of them. They're
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well-built, classic design. They, they look a lot better than modern, modern builds in
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McMansions on average. Yeah. So for, if people are wondering, well, like, okay, I'll go into the
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story now of mail order brides. Yes. The story of the famous mail order brides of the old west began
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when the gold rush brought men over the Rocky mountains to new mining communities.
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Ooh. Only a few prospectors struck it rich, but many young men stayed in the west. Mining,
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ranching, farming, hunting, or opening businesses. As towns began to grow, these men wanted wise to
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create families and to build more stable, lasting communities in the western territories. Men
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outnumbered women drastically, sometimes by as many as nine to one. Not good odds. The obvious answer
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was single women from the east willing to start new lives. And this wasn't just a phenomenon in
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the old west. It was also a phenomenon in Australia. So here are some Australian ones,
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because you know, you had the men in the outback farming and stuff trying to bring women out.
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And, and they're really interesting to analyze. So you get an idea of what a man valued in a partner
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back then. Like when he's out and he's like, I want a woman that meet these criteria, this,
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this is what he's thinking. And, and keep in mind how this would work. He would like go to the
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Telegraph office and you'd be like, I want to contact one of these, these magazines or newspapers
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out east or in, you know, one of the major cities in Australia. And I, I want to write,
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you know, to them like descriptions of what I'd want in a wife. And, and, and, and, and,
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okay. So, and he also, it was more like singles ads. I mean, it was kind of male,
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it was long distance singles ads. And you've also got to think when you're hearing this,
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what it says about like how they're trying to sell themselves to the woman as well.
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Like their understanding of what the woman values. Okay. So this one matrimonial,
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two young men aged 31 and 25 wish to correspond with young ladies was a view to matrimony photos
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exchanged. If necessary, ladies must be able to read and write and capable of conducting a store
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on gold fields if required. So what's really interesting in this is first, like they don't
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care that much what they look like. It's like, okay.
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Oh, photo's optional. I'm a little confused by two men together looking.
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No, they're, they're, they're okay. So they both want basically the same thing,
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a competent woman. Right. And so they're like, well, let's just pull on the ad, you know,
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because we both want a woman who's like good at accounting and business.
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I'm just picturing this really cute gay couple. That's like, we just need wives.
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Beards. No, no, no. You see that pretty frequently in these is that people will pull in together.
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Yeah. They're like, well, let's just go in together and we'll, we'll look at the, the,
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you know, the correspondence and see which ones we like. And then what's also really interesting
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here. And we've noted this before. And like, people don't believe us. We're like women historically
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were expected to work and work in the family business. This is what a corporate family was.
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The idea of a nuclear family where a woman stayed at home and did nothing does not represent what
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your ancestors were doing. You were getting a business partner. These were more ads for
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business partners, for sure. Except for a very short time from the 1910s to like the 1970s. So
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if you go back to the old west, you know, listen to what the, the one qualification they want in a
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woman. Ladies must be able to read and write and be capable of conducting a store on a gold field if
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necessary, i.e. you need to be able to run a business. That's what I need you for. I'll do like the
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gold panning and stuff like that. And you run the store. Like that's the way it often worked,
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which is really interesting and understanding what was expected from gender dynamics in a relationship.
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And also what you'll see in a lot of these is women were expected to manage the finances.
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So here's another one. Matrimony, a young man, about 24 years of age of respectable connections,
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having an income of about 120 pounds per annum, wishes to obtain an introduction to a lady about 19 or 20,
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agreeable in person and capable of looking after domestic affairs, property, no object.
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Okay. So again, what he's saying here is he's not asking about looks. He's saying,
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I need a woman who can look after my financial affairs, which is really fascinating. But I think
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it's also signaling to the woman, like what type of guys these are as well. Like this is part of a
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two part signaling. This is, look, I'm a respectable guy. And you know, you come, you meet with me and
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we'll, we'll start a business together and we'll build something that matters together. Right.
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You know, it's not like, Hey, I'm looking for a hoochie mama, you know, any, any thoughts on that
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before I go further? We need to get back to this, this, but this does, what I'm thinking already,
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when I hear this is there's this phenomenon within the rationalist or EA community online,
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whereby some people will post marriage bounties and they're just like way too wordy versions of this.
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And I, when I compare these succinct ads with the marriage bounty descriptions,
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I'm really seeing the difference between why people were able to get married back then
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when being practical and why practical, logical people today can.
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I mean, keep in mind, they were paying for the letter on these, but I know, but no,
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my point though is like these people worked out to like, what do I really need? You know, someone
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who owns property and can, you know, or like someone who's practical and not crazy and can
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help out domestically around the house doesn't have to be a supermodel. Whereas when I, when I go
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through some of these, these marriage bounties that people describe, it's like long documents
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and like, I'm an INTJ and I'm looking for someone with like, they're being completely unreasonable
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about what they want. And, and they, they also are being way too, but I think it's, I think it's
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unfair to just point this out with the EA community. It was in our own fan base. We'll talk to people
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and they're like, I want like a hot woman and I'll get a hotter woman. And like, you know,
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I'll go to Latin America and find a hot wife, you know? And it's like, no, you, you shouldn't even
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be caring about that. Like, you know, like you, you should be focused on their, like when I met you,
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your attractiveness was of, I think a very obvious to me of little concern. I was much more
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interested in your industriousness and your breadth of knowledge and curiosity to learn new things.
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That was like my criteria. Like it was, it was not big, but I was, I wanted people who, someone who's
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world-class at those things, which I think, you know, why our relationship has gone so well.
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But there's, there's other, like when I look at other ads and this is from later periods,
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so you're talking around the gold rush around 1849 to 1856, I imagine all the way up until like
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the 1920s people were still that practical. Like I'm there's, there's a Pittsburgh press 1921 ad that
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just reads I'm 27 employed by the government, have a small, but reasonable salary. We'll make some poor
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working girl from 18 to 25, a good husband and a happy home. Must be Protestant, no dancers,
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flirts, or street walkers need answer. I had that one. I was going to do this one. I thought this was
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a good one. No dancers or flirts. No, but it's always, I want a woman of strong moral character.
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And not even, no, he doesn't, he's not even here like, oh, you know, you can't have never slept with
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someone before. You can't have never. Yeah. Just like, don't like your character be someone
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who's addicted to that. That's it. He's being reasonable. Yeah. He cares about like religious,
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ideological compatibility. That makes perfect sense. I actually really don't understand how
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interfaith marriages work. Yeah. And that's the thing is, is it, and you, you don't have to say
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this in so many words. And I think when you say it in too many words, then
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you're losing people. And you see his aspiration here is to be a good husband to somebody.
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Yeah. He, he, he, he, he's explaining right up front. I'm a man of modest means, right? Like
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I'm not making, I'm not a sugar daddy. I'm not a wealthy man, but if you're poor and you want a
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decent, stable life, I'm your guy. Yeah. You know, that's great. Here's one. The respectable man
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desirous of forming a matrimonial alliance with a young and respectable female, but I love that line
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instead of a wedding, a matrimonial alliance. That's what I. That sounds prestigious. Sign me up
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for that. People, maybe people go for it more if it's a matrimonial alliance and not a marriage.
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Oh, hello. Sorry. It's somebody from the New York times. Yeah. I'm happy to take your call.
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It's just a fact checker from the New York times. Okay. So she's going to call back. She's got
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something else going on, but you know, I, I mean, I think that we should view marriages that way as
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matrimonial alliances. That's like a really powerful way, much more so than like a matrimonial
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submission. And this is when people are like, Oh, in the old days, woman submitted to their husbands.
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Does this sound like you want somebody to submit to her? Like, no, a matrimonial alliance with a
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young and respectable female is informed of a person ready and willing to change the state of the
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single blessedness for the hazardous chains of wedlock life exclamation mark. So he's saying
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willing to change the state of single blessedness for the, the hazardous chains of wedlock life
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saying, I know that a marriage is a risk for, for both of us, but, but I want somebody who is willing
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to take that risk. Now here's the, here's the first thing we've got her appearance, very attractive,
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a temper, excitable, and a mind capable, uh, to enlighten the dark shadows of his earthly
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pilgrimage. Wow. He's looking for a muse. Yeah. He's looking for somebody. No, he's, you know,
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he's like, I want somebody who's attractive, excitable. I like excitable women too. Yeah. Yeah.
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I guess. Yeah. Someone who gets jazzed about your ideas. Yeah. You're right. I mean, not, not all of
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these are agnostic to appearance. Like the one that, that says desires to meet a single or widow lady of
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some means and of refinement and Christian age 33 to 43, weight 125 to 145 pounds, height 5, 4 to 5,
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7 stylish and of neat appearance, but plain, which is really interesting. So you had, you had read
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another one or. Well, that, yeah, I mean, they're not agnostic to appearance. Not all of them are,
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but like weight ranges, like 125 to 145 pounds, height 5, 4 to 5, 7. Stylish and of neat appearance,
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but plain. Plain. I love it. Okay. So I asked like, why, why did women do this? Right? Like
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women who answered the ads for wives in the West were those who weren't finding men or men of quality
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at home or those who wanted to get away from home for some reason. Reasons included having strict
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parents being subject of a scandal that was ruining their reputation or simply wanting adventure or a
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new start after something bad had happened at home. These women needed to find husbands elsewhere
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far from where they lived. Surprisingly, no shortage of women answered these mail order bride ads. Many
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old Western marriages were made this way. In most cases, the marriages went smoothly as both parties
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represented themselves accurately. No one wanted to travel a thousand miles or more across a continent
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or wait for someone to travel that far to get to them only to find out there were lies involved that
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would make the marriage unpleasant for one or both of them. However, the occasional stories of
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mail order bride ventures went awry. And I think this is the core thing is the, you know, the reason
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why this didn't end up poorly that frequently is just because you got to live the rest of your life
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with this person. Right. You know? Yeah. Yeah. You're not gonna. Lying works on a one-off. I'm never
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going to see you again basis. It doesn't work if you need to depend on that person, the rest of your life
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and your spouse, whether you're antagonistic toward them or not, they can really make your
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life miserable. Your life is in their hands. Your food is in their hands. Your safety is in their
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hands. If you are sick and vulnerable, they decide whether you live. As a husband, like that's
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absolutely true. If you piss off your wife, she can just dab you at any time in the night. Yeah. Or if
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you're, if you're deadly ill, she could just not give you water. You know, like there are ways,
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you know, even without actively. Actually, there was one serial killer woman who just like killed
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tons of husbands. Yes. Yes. I think there's, there's been multiple of them in history because
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it's, it's a pretty easy game to play. One notable example, though, by all means, not the only one
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is that of 22 year old school mistress, Elizabeth Berry and bachelor minor, Louise Dribelvis.
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Yes. Not Dribelvis. No, no. But we always called her Dribelvis. I pretended I couldn't
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pronounce it. Lewis described himself as a lonely minor in his ad. Elizabeth was concerned about
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becoming a spinster since she was still unmarried at 22. I wonder if this is related to Brittany,
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which was approaching old age in the old Western marriage market. That is hilarious. 22 was considered
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approaching old age back then. Oh dear. So Elizabeth packed up her things after a short
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correspondence with Lewis and married him in California. On the way, her stagecoach was Rob,
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but one of the three robbers allowed her to keep her luggage, which had her wedding dress and other
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belongings for her new life in it. She noticed the man had a ragged scar on his hand. Later that day,
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she reached Lewis's house and they went to the justice of the peace to get married after she got
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dressed for the ceremony. After the exchange, vows were pronounced man and wife. Elizabeth thought she
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recognized Lewis's voice and saw the same ragged scar on his hand she had seen in the robber when
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he signed the marriage license. Realizing he was one of the robbers, she fled and history does not
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record what became of her. It turns out Lewis was indeed a minor, but he neglected to say in his ad
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that he had supplemented his income by robbing stagecoaches with a couple of his friends.
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Um, okay. So didn't necessarily have their happily for after she just ran off, just ran away. That's
00:22:09.180
really dangerous because high status did too, too high, you know, women just expect you to have money
00:22:15.780
without working for it. So that's the thing. And also, but like, she's out there and she's vulnerable.
00:22:20.540
I would, I mean, ran away. You know, I don't know if she like ran, you know, if the ratio was nine to
00:22:29.340
one, she could probably take a pick of the litter. Okay. On June 4th, 1871, Sarah Baines hopped down
00:22:37.900
from a wagon in Fort Bridger, a remote military and trading outpost at the crossroads of several pioneer
00:22:43.020
trails in what would one day become Wyoming. Baines, a 24 year old seamstress from Louisiana had just
00:22:49.660
spent several months traveling 1,500 miles through roadless territory alone, but she wouldn't be alone
00:22:56.460
for long. She'd come to Fort Bridger to get married. The groom was Jay Hensley. Imagine that months
00:23:03.020
traveling alone as a woman in the old west and a company that is terrifying because you know,
00:23:11.820
while that your husband wouldn't grape you, a bandit might, a native American might help you.
00:23:16.540
They don't have any interest in maintaining your, yeah, man, unaccompanied. That is Native
00:23:21.180
Americans during this period. Some tribes, not all tribes were genuinely terrifying and monstrous.
00:23:25.820
They would, they would do really horrible things. The, the one that you always use that, you know,
00:23:30.700
you know, off the top of your head, it was the, the one that Pocahontas came from that, which,
00:23:34.140
which is not one of the tribes. They had some torture involving burning and pulling your skin.
00:23:38.780
They would pull your skin off with a clam. Um, yeah, clamshells, but they weren't even like the
00:23:44.140
most violent Indians were generally the Plains Indians. Like this is where you had the big war
00:23:48.780
like cultures that developed during this period. And so really a scary, brave thing to do.
00:23:53.500
The groom was Jay Hensley, a 48 year old farmer who'd left Ohio some years before to seek his fortune
00:24:00.460
out west. The two met after Hensley responded to an ad placed in the matrimonial pages of the October 12th,
00:24:07.500
1869 edition of Frank Leslie's illustrated weekly. They corresponded via letter for more than a year
00:24:13.340
before Hensley proposed the day after Brian's arrived at Fort Bridger, and they were married by the
00:24:18.460
fort's minister in a small ceremony on the banks of Gorosh Creek. The next day they left to open a general
00:24:25.900
store in Plackville, California. Platterville. Platterville. Platterville. I don't know how to say it.
00:24:32.780
In the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, the Hensleys were married for 51 years.
00:24:37.580
So here you see a few things, you know, one, it's not like the husband is the breadwinner.
00:24:40.860
They went to open a store together as soon as they, and they like started their life. It wasn't
00:24:46.700
like he had a store operational and then he got a wife. It was like, hey, what do you want to spend
00:24:51.580
your life doing? Cause we're going to be doing it together. And they go open a store together.
00:24:54.860
Right. You know, and they end up married for 51 years. It seems like a pretty, you know,
00:24:59.500
harmonious. And I will say it always gets to me. We, we should actually do an episode that's like
00:25:03.660
a realistic take on native American pioneer interactions, because the, I mean, I think
00:25:10.300
you have two periods. You have the one period where, you know, in 1950s Americana, where,
00:25:15.100
you know, people naively understood it as like cowboys versus Indians. And the Indians were
00:25:20.220
generally the bad guys, like just like, you know, except for like the, the wise friend Indian.
00:25:25.740
Yes. Who would, who would be a guide or whatever. But then in, in like Wokeville,
00:25:29.980
it became, you know, settlers always bad, like Indians always good. Like, but I think that that's
00:25:35.100
also really a twisted understanding of history. And there's actually this great one where they were
00:25:39.980
like, they were interviewing some like ultra progressive and, and they were talking about
00:25:44.380
how, you know, before the settlers came, like the native Americans all got along. There was never any
00:25:49.180
war. There was never any torture. There was never any slavery. I mean, first off, there is plenty of,
00:25:54.140
of history of native American tribes doing terrible things to each other independently.
00:25:58.940
No, no, no. They didn't believe that. They believed this narrative of like,
00:26:02.780
they were like these wise, like mystic people who like, didn't do that. And it's like, no,
00:26:07.820
there, there were some tribes that were like unusually nice. Like the Cherokee would be an example of
00:26:12.780
this, but you know, there were others like the Apache and the Comanche and the Seminoles.
00:26:20.700
Yeah, proper scary. The Seminoles don't even mind this today. You know, they've done pretty well.
00:26:24.380
They ended up buying the Hard Rock Cafe chain at the tribe.
00:26:29.180
For people who don't know, the Seminoles were the ones who lived in the Florida,
00:26:31.580
like Everglades and Swamp areas, and nobody really conquered them ever. And nobody wanted the land.
00:26:39.820
But it keeps you strong, you know, when you live in-
00:26:42.460
That's why we're so busy on city-states in undesirable areas. That's actually a really great example
00:26:47.580
of like, people are like, why do you want to build in the far north? Well,
00:26:50.380
for the same reason, the Seminoles were okay, relatively speaking, because they were in
00:26:59.580
Yeah. So here is a story that was put in a newspaper.
00:27:05.260
Mofat County ranch man secures charming housekeeper, married four hours after they first met.
00:27:11.500
And this is a very old write-up. This is like a modern write-up.
00:27:14.140
The young lady came in on the belated train something after four o'clock, was met by her intended
00:27:21.500
husband, and before nine, the deed was done. Now, it must not be imagined that the two were
00:27:25.980
altogether strangers before taking this step. Miss Bette is a sister of Miss Frank LeClaire,
00:27:33.020
who lived near Cal's place on the South Fork. They had been courted by mail for a couple years,
00:27:38.460
and recognized each other instantly when the young lady alighted from the train. R.H. Green was one of
00:27:43.900
the guests of honor at the wedding, and being a mutual friend of the interested parties, aided
00:27:48.540
greatly in their acquaintanceship. The bride is a charming lady who has made her home in Denver for
00:27:53.420
several years. Mr. Cal is one of the enterprising young ranchmen of eastern Mofat County, and has a host of
00:28:00.780
friends who will be enjoying in wishing both much happiness. So there's a few things to note from
00:28:05.820
this story. The first is that the way that this wedding was structured is they had mutual acquaintances
00:28:11.980
who helped source them, which was really common. Yeah, this really seems like a community endeavor.
00:28:16.140
Yeah, another is, which were common, they weren't always, you know, you had some like genuine
00:28:20.220
mail-in brides. But then in other instances, you had, you know, the people being matched by their
00:28:27.740
family members. But here I'd also note where she came from, right? I've mentioned that you have sort
00:28:32.860
of genetic selection events when you're dealing with the West. And a lot of people think of the
00:28:37.420
West as being like a single wave, when actually what it was is multiple waves, and then the most
00:28:44.220
adventurous people from the last wave settling the new wave. So you have, you know, the first wave
00:28:47.660
settling in the Appalachian region, then the next wave settling out in like Texas, and then in the West.
00:28:52.300
And here, this woman who is going out to this really rural region was already settled and living
00:28:56.780
in Denver. Yeah, she was a daughter of risk takers who took an even bigger risk. Yeah,
00:29:03.500
magnifying effect, which is many why many people argue that San Francisco has this sort of collective
00:29:10.540
genetic inheritance of startup risk takers. That's what you got there.
00:29:15.820
Yeah. And it's also important to understand like how bad things were for women in these cities in terms
00:29:21.020
of like, what led them to go out and do this, which was that, you know, often jobs, if you didn't have
00:29:27.980
a husband were hard to get as a woman, you know, you could end up in one of the like sewing factories,
00:29:33.180
which is like a nightmare existence. Yeah. God, that'd be a fun one to do an episode on or a depressing
00:29:39.580
one to do episode on the old workhouses. Basically, they kept you like a slave, you know, you'd rather
00:29:45.580
be a sex slave, but then at one of these workhouses where they keep you working, you know, extremely
00:29:51.500
long shifts every day of the week. In very unsafe conditions. Yeah. On these giant looms,
00:29:57.100
you can still go tour them and stuff like that. And, and that was, you know, if you, if you weren't from
00:30:00.940
a wealthy family or you weren't like the oldest kid from a wealthy family, you know, this is, this is
00:30:04.700
what was waiting for you if you didn't secure a husband. And well, that or like dying on the streets
00:30:09.260
or becoming a pickpocket or a beggar or thief or, you know, so for a lot of these women,
00:30:14.460
this was actually a very good option. Also keep in mind that many of them were coming from like
00:30:19.340
Puritan strict households or something like that. And we're having the rebellious phase and we're
00:30:23.660
like, you know what, I'd really like to, you know, live a bit more free. And the, the West was
00:30:28.620
significantly more gender equality than the East, like women in these states and territories,
00:30:34.140
you know, in the East, sometimes they weren't allowed to own property. They weren't allowed to,
00:30:36.780
et cetera, et cetera. That wasn't true when they got to the West and the arrangements that they were
00:30:41.020
able to form were, were generally significantly more gender equal. So if you're a young woman
00:30:45.580
who had a sense of adventure and wanted a degree of equality, you could find that.
00:30:50.380
But people, people also like, you know, made a little fun of this. Like it was a little negative,
00:30:55.580
like the early days of dating online. Like I remember when we were dating.
00:30:58.300
Oh yeah. You would get the side eye for dating online. Yes. Yeah. Well, I think the important
00:31:05.180
thing to note is that not dating IRL, like not meeting your partner at church or in school or
00:31:12.940
having them be your neighbor is, is a risky endeavor and is viewed with derision and suspicion by non-risk
00:31:21.100
takers, by conformist non-risk takers. And that's why online dating is seen this way. This is why
00:31:26.700
these mail order brides were seen this way. And yet this behavior has been actually quite common
00:31:33.020
for a long time. That's how, I mean, essentially that's how my grandmother married my grandfather.
00:31:38.620
They corresponded via mail for some time after meeting in person just a few times after the war.
00:31:45.980
Yeah. So, so the Hartford Courant remarked in 1910, the Wichita Eagle reported with sardonic glee
00:31:53.820
that Miss Effie Newland, one of the wealthy young women of Hoaxie, Kansas, married a Mr. Lopez,
00:32:00.060
a sailor of Key West, Florida, after she jokingly responded to his ad for a wife.
00:32:05.740
But Lopez was a splendid writer and the girl soon became infatuated with his lovemaking.
00:32:10.380
I love it today. Lovemaking means something totally else, but they meant like being sweet in letters.
00:32:15.420
Yes, I get this. The paper claimed Lopez traveled to Hoaxie and the couple were married while the
00:32:21.020
parents protested. Other stories fueled the panic that marriages made outside society bounds were
00:32:25.980
dangerous. The Los Angeles Herald reported on October 31st, 1897, that a 32 year old man shot
00:32:32.700
and killed his heavily insured 19 year old wife, who he met through an advertisement in a matrimonial
00:32:38.300
paper. Of course, some stories had happy endings, marriages that they didn't well. So like one
00:32:43.900
headline from 1907 declared, girl writes in secret and wins rich planter. The story of an Indiana woman
00:32:49.260
who met her husband through an ad in matrimonial paper. This fair spent years writing to each other
00:32:53.420
in secret and they married in person. This is, this is a story from an old newspaper or something that it's
00:32:58.860
poorly. Red hair, box Cupid's plans. Mail order bride forgot to ask perspective husband about it.
00:33:05.980
Trip here in vain, Kentucky. She shows up, but she's a ginge.
00:33:10.700
No, he's a ginge. And, and, and she immediately renounced their marriage possibility because he
00:33:15.500
was redhead because she said, quote, I just couldn't live with a redheaded man. I couldn't.
00:33:24.380
Is that actually just like literally her, her stereotype against people with red hair?
00:33:31.820
Oh, okay. This is a crazy stay off from an old newspaper. Like who knows how many of these old
00:33:37.020
stories are true. A brother and sister drawn together through matrimonial ad. Council Bluffs
00:33:41.740
October 18th. The most remarkable romance ever brought to light in southwestern Iowa has befallen
00:33:47.820
James Coopington, a prosperous farmer residing in the Nishawa Bota Bottom, 20 miles east of here.
00:33:55.580
However, Coopington advertised for a wife and received a response from a widow in Georgia.
00:34:00.300
They exchanged a number of letters and he sent the woman money with which to come to him.
00:34:06.140
They were married on the day of her arrival. He met her at the depot and they were mutually
00:34:11.020
dumbfounded when it was discovered that the intended bride was none other than Coopington's
00:34:16.460
sister from whom he had been separated at youth. He heard she was killed in a railway wreck
00:34:21.500
and mourned her as dead. Each married and other, and their respective spouses died.
00:34:27.100
The sister's name being changed by marriage, Coopington did not recognize her in correspondence.
00:34:33.820
Did they get married? Do I, did I hear that right?
00:34:37.820
They were previously married and they had, that's why they didn't, you know, the name.
00:34:42.060
Um, who knows if it's real, but it's a sweet story if it is like, I want it. I mean, yeah,
00:34:46.860
at least you discovered your sibling is still out there. Okay. So to go through some original texts,
00:34:54.060
because I love reading these, this is from 1865 in the Chicago Tribune. Correspondence desired for
00:34:59.580
the love of the thing, fun or matrimony, any young ladies between 16 and 21. This, this is,
00:35:05.340
this was like a more flirty one, like either for marriage or just for fun.
00:35:08.620
Oh dear. Ooh. And, and then this is an ad for people to join like a service for doing this.
00:35:14.780
Either rich, handsome, pretty, stylish, accomplished, refined, Italian, or brillianted
00:35:19.180
by two gentlemen, a wrong, a young, a rich young widower, S.H. Layard. Oh, so this is for two men.
00:35:25.740
And a rather handsome, steady fellow, the only son of wealthy parents.
00:35:38.220
These men know what's up. That is a horny marriage ad.
00:35:43.100
They're ready for something raunchy, AKA secret. That is interesting. Wow.
00:35:48.780
A widow, this is from a widower merchant and stockman lives in Kansas, 56 years old,
00:35:54.140
height, six feet, weight, 210 pound brunette, black hair and eyes, wishes corresponding with ladies of
00:36:00.300
same age, without encumbrances and whiz means must move in the best socially and be fully qualified to
00:36:06.700
help make a happy home object matrimony. So he's like, I, you need to be, you know, upper, you need to,
00:36:13.420
you know, not classy. Yeah. Classy, right? There's a lad in Missouri with a flat foot, seeds in his pocket,
00:36:20.380
a brick in his hat, a blue eyes, size tin shoe called the bull of the woods and the boy for you.
00:36:27.260
Well, there's a lot of contemporary lingo in that one. My goodness.
00:36:30.940
A brick under his hat and seeds in his pocket. What on earth?
00:36:35.500
He's giving it a vibe with that one. That's what he is. Absolutely. No, he's slinging it.
00:36:41.420
Um, here's one. Once pretty girl, age 17 to 20. Advertiser is 29, five feet, nine inches tall,
00:36:49.260
blonde, can laugh for 15 minutes. Once a pretty girl. These are tall people. Are they overstating
00:36:54.860
just like people are on online dating ads now? I wonder. Because this is really tall. Five,
00:37:00.380
nine, six foot. Like these are very tall heights for that time period. We've seen what
00:37:05.340
beds look like from that time period. This is in clothing too. Yeah. Probably lying then.
00:37:10.780
Yeah. I doubt. I doubt. Yeah. Well, at least some things never change.
00:37:14.380
Respectable young man, 20 years old, good city position, desires acquaintance of modest young
00:37:19.980
lady, age 17 to 21, was home nearby, object to attend operas and church, perhaps more.
00:37:27.420
Perhaps more. He's showing off his wife. He's like, I go to operas and church and
00:37:32.300
that's what I want to do with you. He's really, really for signaling. No, but again, this is not,
00:37:37.340
you know, these are not guys who are like, I'm looking for a hot woman who can do, who can make
00:37:42.380
a good dinner. Like no one's been fed that. Right. Like no one's been like, you know, okay, here's one
00:37:46.700
from 1898. 30, wealthy, lost mother for whom I sacrificed youth. Dread a lonely future. Seek husband and
00:37:54.620
true companion. This woman is desperate. And 30 at that age was ancient. She's really
00:38:01.580
down for what she wanted. That's rough. This one was in 1899. Widow, 44 Southerner,
00:38:08.940
a stranger owned home. West end would like the hearthstone of a heart swept and the cobwebs
00:38:15.900
brushed away matrimony. Oh, sorry. Would like the hearthstone and heart swept. Getting poetic.
00:38:21.180
Okay. So he's being poetic. He's showing, you know, whatever. Okay. Here's one. Hold on. Here's
00:38:25.980
one. An older bachelor returning from the mines finds his old sweetheart married and old acquaintances
00:38:31.980
scattered. Desires lady acquaintance, object marriage. That's from 1904. I like that. Very
00:38:37.940
straight to the point. I was going to marry someone. Like I'm not like a flirt or whatever. She just got
00:38:42.340
married when I got back. This one here from 1921. Businessman, gentlemen, Christian, 33 to 43 age,
00:38:49.580
125. Oh yeah. So this is the one where you're talking about height and weight.
00:38:54.540
And the skills he wants is music, stenography, typing, bookkeeping, good penmanship. That's
00:38:59.660
interesting. Okay. Here we've got here an ad for husband. I like this one. Okay. You got gold
00:39:06.140
diggers even in the past. 38 year old brunette seeks a husband with an automobile. This is from 1921.
00:39:13.500
Needs. Does she want to marry a man or a car? This is very interesting.
00:39:17.320
The cars would have been quite a new contraption back then. Like, Ooh, I want one of these men who
00:39:22.180
lives fast. Here's one from 1881. I think this one is interesting. Young person of noble birth,
00:39:27.720
beautiful as Helena, housewife like Penelope, et cetera, seeks a husband through press entirely
00:39:33.700
without acquaintances of the masculine sex. And so what she's saying here is, look at me. I'm so
00:39:40.200
educated. I'm a little, you know. Yeah. But is she describing herself to Helen of Troy? I mean,
00:39:46.280
good luck lady. Yes. And a wife like Penelope. No one wants to marry a woman who thinks she's
00:39:52.460
literally as beautiful as Helen of Troy. That is just trouble. I don't care how beautiful she is.
00:39:57.200
She doesn't have any male acquaintances. Maybe, maybe she'll be. Yeah. For a fucking reason. No one
00:40:01.980
can tolerate her. I can't, I can't even deal with one, one collection of sentences that she wrote
00:40:08.700
hundreds of years ago. Okay. Almost hundreds. So I found the first one that Mitch is cooking.
00:40:12.720
Gentleman 35, rancher in Montana, seeks lady under 30, adept at household duties and not afraid of
00:40:17.520
hard work. So he starts with the hard work saying, must know how to cook and mend. That's good. Yeah.
00:40:22.380
So rather than keep going, I collected some more, but this episode has run long and I think that we
00:40:26.300
get the idea of what people were looking for. Yeah. The question is, how can we bring this back?
00:40:31.100
Because I like this. And I like this idea of like, of looking for a business partner. You know,
00:40:39.260
looking for someone who, you know, can, can move out here, knows how to do these things,
00:40:46.920
follows this religion. I have a great idea. What? Okay. So just like the old West,
00:40:53.060
our podcast is predominantly male watched. Yeah. So what women can do if you want,
00:40:58.520
and you want to reach out to us and have like a, a like short thing at the end of an episode where
00:41:03.420
we pitch you to the audience, right? Yeah. We forward you correspondence. If you're looking
00:41:09.020
for marriage and kids, you, you, you, you let us know and we'll make a pitch. Email us at
00:41:14.640
partners at pragmatistfoundation.com with a succinct, like these ads description of what you're looking
00:41:22.020
for. Also one more pitch also for the ladies watching this, there is a society of mothers who
00:41:30.740
have stepped back from, you know, rigorous full-time careers to do more parenting who
00:41:37.080
nevertheless want to be involved in business and start businesses and kind of work together,
00:41:42.020
kind of like in a, in a writer's club to keep each other honest and move forward and actually
00:41:45.700
get those businesses started. It's called undercurrent. If you're interested in joining
00:41:49.700
this also email us at partners at pragmatistfoundation.com. We're not running it. We're not the founders of it,
00:41:54.820
but we, we met the founder at natal con and she's a really cool woman. Also a mother of a bunch of
00:42:01.900
children who's she has a finance background, also very professional and it's a cool group. So email
00:42:06.900
us as well. If you're interested in that. Yes. But I, I, I like this idea of, of, of keep it short,
00:42:13.140
simple and what really matters to you, you know? Absolutely. And I think that that'll also help with,
00:42:17.800
with personal framing. Right. But, but I love that. I love you. You recognize that our podcast is the
00:42:22.380
Wild West. A lot of risk-taking, high-achieving, intelligent men. And here's the, here's a sweet
00:42:30.280
one from 1883. I want a wife to talk with at day's end. Someone gentle to make this lonesome place
00:42:37.520
home. Oh, I want to give him a hug, you know? It's okay, little man. It's probably not. He probably
00:42:47.580
died a very painful death. Yes. A lot of, that was actually a, a fun one from A Thousand Ways to
00:42:54.900
Die in the West. I thought that was actually a fairly funny movie with a interesting premise of,
00:43:00.580
of a, like, I think it sold pretty wrong. Like it sold like, oh, all the ways you could die in the
00:43:04.980
West is what makes it funny. But what makes it funny is taking somebody with modern sensibilities
00:43:10.280
and values and ideas of gender roles and putting them in an old West environment and just watching
00:43:15.700
them constantly, like, flabbergasted at how different things were back then and how much
00:43:20.420
nobody cared. I have only the finest healing tonics and elixirs procured from the farthest
00:43:25.080
corners of the globe. Ogden's celebrated stomach bitters. God, look at the ingredients. Cocaine,
00:43:31.440
alcohol, morphine, mercury with chalk. What the hell is mercury with chalk? Science. And red flannel.
00:43:39.280
Red flannel? There's shirt in here? Pieces of shirt. Here's one that I think you'll find from,
00:43:44.120
from 1889. Widower, 50, Texas. Owns 200 acres. Seeks a lady with some capital to join in matrimony
00:43:51.900
and improve the land. Just like, look. He wants an infusion of, this is, yeah, no, this is a growth
00:43:57.720
equity marriage. I, no, I'm not signing up for that. Nice try. I love you so much, Simone. I'm glad I got
00:44:05.800
you through the modern version of one of these. I reached out to you. I'll have you. You did. You did.
00:44:11.900
You were the trollop and I really appreciate that. Thanks. Sorry. You were an aggressive woman
00:44:18.040
in, in, in the, in the deed of, of, of, of matrimony. I, my first message to you was a
00:44:25.860
question about your startup. Okay. Oh, okay. You were being sly. And you were like, let's discuss it
00:44:33.400
over dinner. And it was like, okay. But no, it was always about business with us.
00:44:39.660
You were not interested in the startup at all. You, of course I wasn't. I was interested in your
00:44:44.980
stupid face. I love you too much. Oh my God. I love you too much.
00:44:50.560
I'm really lucky. I ended up with you. It's just letting you know that. Sorry. I did submit it
00:44:59.680
though. And it, it. You got it as an unlisted video. Can you send me the unlisted video just
00:45:05.420
so I can check it works? The link that you sent. I just checked that it works and I just submitted
00:45:09.060
it. So it's a little late, but sure. Here's the unlisted video. We are submitting to Andreessen
00:45:14.560
Horowitz. We got to round two applications. They liked our pitches of both of them,
00:45:21.020
both for the AI video game project and for the school. So that is so exciting. So exciting.
00:45:27.600
It is exciting. It is really exciting. You are just an absolute star, Simone.
00:45:36.620
And you know what else is on my unlisted YouTube videos? It's, it's insane. There's the gist of
00:45:41.480
Gigaverse. There's an original, and this is 2022 description of the Collins Institute,
00:45:47.300
which is crazy from our original fundraising for it. Um, and I have our Saberos con Andres spot.
00:45:55.420
Andres. We, we did that on Peruvian TV. The top, one of the top Peruvian TV shows had us on at one
00:46:02.080
point, but hold on. You were on NPR today and you were like, it was exactly like that scene from
00:46:06.720
Parks and Rec. Like they had this NPR accent and they were all like low energy. Leslie,
00:46:12.340
could one say that a book is nothing more than a painting of words, which are the notes on the
00:46:20.680
tapestry of the greatest film ever sculpted? One could say that, but should one join?
00:46:31.100
And the bioesthetist was like, well, of course no one would call you a Nazi, Simone, for what
00:46:35.520
you're doing. And you're like, no one would describe that as like what the Nazis did. And I'm
00:46:39.740
like, every day. Progressives don't know how crazy their own party is. Like just, just not even
00:46:46.780
close. I thought what we're going to do for the next episode. He had more eugenic views than I did
00:46:51.140
because he believed that there were some things that universally everyone could agree. We should
00:46:58.100
No, they wouldn't agree on that. They wouldn't agree with you. Yeah. And that's, that's crazy
00:47:02.340
that like progressives have more eugenic views than we do, but we're, we're the bad ones. We're
00:47:09.300
evil. We're the one. Oh, sorry. Not, not sorry, actually.
00:47:14.320
Yeah. No. And I've been, I've been getting boiled at something because I've been watching people angry
00:47:17.820
at, at a lot of our like friends, like the, the lady who was on our show, science lady,
00:47:22.100
Sabina Hofstetter, because she, you know, championed a book that was like, Hey, science is getting too
00:47:27.000
woke and it's causing issues. And the guy was like, Oh, how could you say that when Trump's
00:47:31.000
in office? And so we're going to rail on him. We're going to say, we won the war on science.
00:47:35.860
Toasty, what did you learn about picking daffodils?
00:47:38.000
I just wanted, I just wanted, I just wanted, I was just, you, I just wanted to, you, I just
00:47:49.120
wanted to put, I just wanted to put your flowers in the house so, so we can go, uh, can go to
00:47:57.280
the store to get some blueberries. Oh, okay. Toasty wants blueberries. We gotta go.