During the initial American settlement of the western part of North America, men mainly went out there. They went to look for gold, start homestead farms and ranches, and begin new lives where resources were plentiful, spaces were wide and open, and there was much more freedom than back east. However, the many single men who went west soon felt lonely. They may have had male friends nearby, or maybe they didn’t. Either way, it was no substitute for having female companionship. Only a few men brought wives and/or families with them. The number of single women in the West was negligible (there were a few, but far from enough to go around compared to the men who went there alone). It wasn’t long before men started thinking of creative ways to get wives without having to travel away from their land and risk being claimed or taken over by someone else while they were gone.
Some men wrote home asking friends and family for recommendations for single women they knew who would make good wives, and the courtship was by correspondence until the couple decided to marry, when the woman would go west for the ceremony and to start her new life. However, a much more common scenario was the mail-order bride. Men in the West advertised in Eastern newspapers for wives. In the ads, they would tell a bit about themselves and what they were looking for in a wife. Interested women who met the qualifications of a particular advertiser would write back. From there, the process from the first letter to marriage was much the same as for men who got wives through their social networks back home. Once in a while, a woman would advertise in a Western newspaper looking for a husband, usually if she weren’t finding anyone who was interested in her (or vice versa) at home, and the courtship process was the same as if she was answering an ad rather than writing one.
Women who answered the ads for wives in the West were those who weren’t finding men, or men of quality, at home or those who wanted to get away from home for some reason. Reasons included having strict parents, being the subject of a scandal that was ruining their reputation, or simply wanting adventure and/or a new start after something bad happened at home. These women needed to find husbands elsewhere, far from where they lived. Surprisingly, no shortage of women answered these mail-order bride ads. Many Old West marriages were made this way.
In most cases, the marriages went smoothly, as both parties represented themselves accurately. No one wanted to travel a thousand miles or more across the continent (or wait for someone to travel that far to get to them) only to find there were lies involved that would make the marriage unpleasant for one or both of them. However, the occasional stories of mail-order bride ventures went awry.
One notable example, though by all means not the only one, is that of 22-year-old school mistress Elizabeth Berry and bachelor miner Louis Dreibelbis. Louis described himself as a lonely miner in his ad. Elizabeth was concerned about becoming a spinster since she was still unmarried at 22, which was approaching old age in the Old West marriage market. Elizabeth packed up her things after a short correspondence with Louis and married him in California. On the way, her stagecoach was robbed, but one of the three robbers allowed her to keep her luggage, which had her wedding dress and all her other belongings for her new life in it. She noticed the man had a ragged scar on one hand.
Later that day, she reached Louis’s house, and they went to the justice of the peace to get married after she got dressed for the ceremony. After they exchanged vows and were pronounced man and wife, Elizabeth thought she recognized Louis’s voice and saw the same ragged scar on his hand as she’d seen on the robber when he signed the marriage license. Realizing he was one of the robbers, she fled, and history does not record what became of her. It turns out Louis was indeed a miner, but he neglected to say in his ad that he supplemented his income by robbing stagecoaches with a couple of his friends.
If one of your ancestors was a mail-order bride, researching her history may give you an interesting story about why she decided to become one. Learning about her life after moving to marry her new husband will also provide a really interesting family tale from a unique Old West institution.