by Chris Enss
Copyright © 2005 by Chris Enss
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in an form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or by the publisher. Requests for permission should be made in writing to The Globe Pequot Press, P.O. Box 480, Guilford, Connecticut 06437.
TwoDot is a registered trademark of The Globe Pequot Press.
Text design: Lisa Reneson
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Enss, Chris, 1961–
Hearts West: true stories of mail-order brides on the frontier/Chris Enss. —1st ed.
p. cm.
“A TwoDot book”—T.p. verso.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-7627-2756-X
1. Marriage brokerage—West (U.S.)—History. 2. Mail order brides—West (U.S.)—Bibliography. 3. Women pioneers—West (U.S.)—Biography. 4. Frontier and pioneer life—West (U.S.) 5. West (U.S.)—Social life and customs. 6. West (U.S.)—Bibliography. I. Title.
HQ802.E575 2005
306.82—dc222005046363
E-ISBN 978-0-7627-9627-4
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
Mary Richardson & Elkanah Walker
Eleanor Berry & Louis Dreibelbis
Asa Mercer
Matrimonial News
Phoebe Harrington & William Silbaugh
The Forlorn Bride
Bethenia Owens-Adair & Legrand Hill
The Benton Brides
A Happy Ride
Rachel Bella Kahn & Abraham Calof
Elinore Pruitt & Clyde Stewart
Trouble on a Bridal Tour
The Red Stocking Snoozers
Eliza Farnham
Bridal Couples
Kathleen Forreststall
The New Plan
Afterword
Bibliography
About the Author
For My Grandma Edna
Who Possesses the Kindest Heart in the East and the West
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I was a teenager, the notion of advertising for a spouse inspired me to use the technique to find a date for the Junior–Senior Prom. The ad I placed in the school newspaper read like this:
Wanted: A date to the Junior–Senior Prom. If even slightly interested in attending this year’s big event, please meet me in front of the school library at lunch time.
Fourteen girls in the same situation as I was showed up, hoping there would be an onslaught of boys who wanted to go to the dance. Alas, only one boy stopped by the library and he was waiting for members of the chess club to meet him and get a game going.
And so I begin my thanks and recognition to the Buena High School newspaper editor who allowed me to so boldly tell my classmates I was dateless and needed help. In writing this book, fond memories of that experience washed over me and helped me to identify, on a small level, with the mail-order brides of the West.
I received a great deal of assistance from the librarians at the California State Library in Sacramento and the Madelyn Helling Library in Nevada City. Researchers at historical libraries from Arizona to New York happily shared many of the documents used to create this book. In particular I would like to express my gratitude to Shane Molander at the State Historical Society of North Dakota; Delores Henry at the Public Library in New Bedford, Massachusetts; and Julia Davis Park at the Idaho Black History Museum. Without their generous contributions this material would not be complete. Thank you also to JoAnn Chartier for adding to the content of the book and seeing me through the process.
And finally, thank you to my editors Stephanie Hester and Megan Hiller for their perseverance and direction. I appreciate all you have done.
FOREWORD
The impact of women on the American frontier in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries should not be underestimated. To a large degree, women were responsible for taming the wilderness of the “Wild West.” Under their influence, churches were formed, schools and libraries were established, and the importance of home and hearth was rediscovered. The result was nothing short of a complete transformation, the conversion of the western frontier from a rowdy, male-dominated society into a place that became a mecca for settlement even after the Gold Rush and the promise of cheap land came to an end. During these early years of western development, women often worked right alongside their men, turning the soil, planting the crops, and caring for the children who came along.
It didn’t take long for men who had traveled to far-off places west of the Mississippi to recognize that their desire and need of the “gentler sex” was profound. It is this desire and need that leads us now to the wonderful compilation before us.
Hearts West reveals the real-life tales of women who became mail-order brides. Also presented are the stories of those enterprising few who attempted to make their fortune by bringing young women, spinsters, and widows to would-be husbands in the West. By the 1850s, so enticing was the call to riches that there were more eligible bachelors in the West than there were in the East. Some women, after answering a mail-order request, were taken out to the new land by their intended. Others traveled alone overland or by sea. Many of the latter became seasick and would remain so for the length of the voyage. As we shall see in the unfolding set of stories brought together here for our enjoyment and education, not all of the matches were successful. All of them, however, contributed to the rich and colorful history of the West’s early years.
—Mary Ann Trygg
Madelyn Helling Branch Librarian, Nevada City, Calif.
(and proud granddaughter of a Dakota Territory pioneering family)
INTRODUCTION
Unmarried miners in these parts showed a consciousness of being somewhat the worse for a long, rough journey West in which they had lived semi-barbarous lives, and for their continued separation from the amenities and refinements of home.
Sarah Royce
Placerville, California—1852
The promise of boundless acres of land in the West lured hundreds of men away from farms, businesses, and homes in the eastern states as tales of early explorers and fur trappers filtered back from the frontier. Thousands more headed for California after hearing the siren call of Gold! Tracts of timber in the Northwest and a farming paradise in the Willamette Valley of Oregon had even more people packing up and leaving home for the promised land.
The vast acres and the trees and the gold were all there, and men set about carving their place in the wilderness. By the early 1850s, western adventurers lifted their heads and looked around and realized one vital element was missing from the bountiful western territories: women.
“A woman’s track was discovered in the road leading to Mormon Island. The track of a woman was such a novel thing the boys enclosed it with sticks (you know women were scarce in California in those days), sang, danced, telling yarns and giving cheers to the woman’s track in the dust until a late hour in the evening,” recalled Henry Bigler, third governor of California.
Unidentified sisters dressed in their Sunday finery submitted this photograph to the San Francisco edition of The Matrimonial News in 1882.
NEVADA COUNTY SEARLS HISTORICAL LIBRARY
Eli
za Farnham, recognizing that she was no beauty, nevertheless was astonished to be the target of admiring eyes wherever she went in the Gold Country in 1849. Shocked at the dissolute lives of the largely male inhabitants of California, she conceived a plan to bring proper ladies to the West, which she saw as badly in need of the civilizing hand of woman. Her plan included a rigorous application process to guarantee only the most virtuous ladies would arrive on the good ship Angelique. The plan was widely publicized and endorsed by clergymen and officials. With anticipation running high, hundreds of angry bachelors nearly started a riot when just three ladies tiptoed down the gangplank in San Francisco.
In Washington Territory, where men outnumbered women nine to one in the 1850s and 1860s, a scheme to ship respectable women and families to the shores of Puget Sound was hatched by Asa Mercer. He raised money for the first trip, traveled to the eastern seaboard, and in 1864 brought his first shipload of marriageable women to Seattle. Only eleven women disembarked, leaving a lot of disillusioned bachelors. Mercer’s second trip in 1866 netted a larger cargo of potential brides, but that trip was to be his last attempt at supplying a rather urgent demand.
Newspapers editorialized about the lack of marriageable females: “We want an emigration of respectable females to California: of rosy-cheeked ‘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,’” opined the editor of the Alta California newspaper in 1851.
The Matrimonial News, a San Francisco matchmaking newspaper, was dedicated to “promoting honorable matrimonial engagements and true conjugal facilities” for men and women through personal advertisements, and was a forerunner of the matchmaking clubs and personal ads in newspapers today. Not all of the matrimonial bureaus and agencies were legitimate, however, and many a disappointed bride or groom was left with empty pockets after contracting for a mail-order mate.
Mail-order bride Elinore Pruitt, a widow from Arkansas, married Clyde Stewart after answering his ad in the News. The two were happily married for more than twenty years. Eleanor Berry was not as lucky. Her mail-order husband misrepresented himself in his letters and the marriage lasted less than an hour.
In Arizona, shootouts over the few eligible females led to the establishment of clubs devoted to arranging marriages. Six Tucson wives met in 1885 and formed the Busy Bee Club. Convinced that marriage would spread calm among the black miners starved for the comforts of home, they met to recruit suitable women to marry the town’s unruly bachelors. Some of the men were old enough to be the fathers or grandfathers of the teenagers they selected as their brides. Once the vows were exchanged, these young women often took on a houseful of children as well as a husband.
Hearts West contains the stories of men and women longing for the tie that binds, who risked everything in making an alliance with a virtual stranger. Some married well; some lost everything. Some, like Seattle’s Mercer Maids, became integral parts of the history of a specific region. Others may be anonymous, yet all deserve to be remembered for helping to civilize the rugged frontier.
MARY RICHARDSON & ELKANAH WALKER
The Missionaries
Is it advisable for me to go out [West] without a companion? This is rather a delicate question to ask. But as I view it of such importance, it will plead its own apology.
Missionary Elkanah Walker’s letter to the American Missions Board
—March 16, 1837
You ought by all means, to have a good, healthy, patient, well-informed devotedly pious wife. There is a Mary Richardson of Baldwin, Maine, who has offered herself to the [Missionary] Board, but we cannot send her single. From her testimony, I should think her a good girl. If you have nobody in view, you might inquire about her.
American Missions Board Secretary William Armstrong’s response to Elkanah Walker
—March 20, 1837
A bright, blinding sunrise lit the small Richardson farm one April morning in Baldwin, Maine, in 1837. Mary Richardson, the eldest daughter of the family, stood in the living room folding her father’s discarded newspapers. Casting a glance out the front window, she squinted hard into the haze that was turning the valley into a trembling distortion of itself. A cloud mercifully drifted in front of the sun and Mary was able to make out two riders approaching the house. She recognized one man to be a family friend, Dr. Lewis Whitney. The other rider was a stranger.
Assuming the men were on their way to visit her father, the twenty-six-year-old woman continued on with her housework. Moments later, her sister summoned her to the parlor to receive Dr. Whitney’s companion, a lean, lanky gentlemen who had come to call on her. Once pleasantries were exchanged, a letter of introduction was presented to Mary.
As good fortune would have it I have learned today of an opportunity to send a line near you at least, by the bearer Mr. Walker and perhaps he will pass through Baldwin in which case I have invited him to call at your Father’s on my account . . . If you receive this line, you will receive it as an introduction of the bearer - Mr. E. Walker to your kind regards, as a suitor for your heart and hand.
Should he thus present himself to you, the act will not be so hasty on his part as might at first seem - he has not been wholly unacquainted with you - though personally unknown.
Friend and fellow missionary student William Thayer
—April 17, 1837
Mary looked up from Thayer’s letter and smiled a guarded smile at the bashful man. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat as Mary continued reading.
Elkanah Walker is a fine man and has been appointed by the American Board to go as a missionary to the Zoolah [sic] mission in South East [sic], Africa . . . Of his disposition . . . without flattery or puffing I number it among the kindest . . . Of his talents I cannot predicate any thing more than respectability. He is not brilliant, but he is exceedingly tormented with diffidence and therefore his first appearance speaks less for him than after-acquaintance would justify. In short, he is one of those men who must be known in order to be justly appreciated. As for his manners - look for yourself. If you can put up with somewhat of the uncultivated—If you can get by that obtrusive awkwardness which he will no doubt “lug in” directly in front of him when paying his addresses to you - If you find nothing insufferable in these . . . I think you can love the man. But you must judge for yourself. A husband is a husband notwithstanding he may be a missionary.
William Thayer—April 17, 1837
Mary was moved by the sentiment in the letter, but knew she would need to know more about this suitor before she could fully pass judgment. Based on looks alone Mary was unimpressed. She described him in her journal as being “a tall and rather awkward gentleman.”
Elkanah stood at six-foot-four and was quite self-conscious of his height. He was painfully shy and unassuming, so much so his friends said it was hard for him to even say amen at the end of his prayers. He was born on August 7, 1805, in North Yarmouth, Maine. He grew up on a farm, attended church regularly, and was the sixth child in a family of ten. From an early age he aspired to be a pastor. He entered the ministry shortly after he turned seventeen.
Elkanah and Mary shared a zeal for serving the Lord. Born on April 1, 1811, Mary knew by the age of ten that she would become a missionary. Like Elkanah, she also came from a large family; she had eleven brothers and sisters. After excelling in all her subjects at school and graduating with high marks, she went on to attend seminary. Once her formal training in missions was complete, she applied to the American Missions Board for a position in the West, but because she was single, her request was denied. Mary was deeply distressed over her circumstances. She briefly contemplated a proposal of marriage from a neighboring farmer, but he was not interested in the missions.
Ought I to bid adieu to all my cherished hopes and unite my destiny with that of a mere farmer with little education and no refin
ement? In a word, shall I escape the horrors of perpetual celibacy? Settle down with the vulgar? I cannot do it.
Mary Richardson—May 1836
Doctor Whitney and Elkanah Walker’s visit that spring morning was brief. The men made their goodbyes and left Mary alone to reflect on the meeting. That evening she recorded her thoughts in her journal.
His remarks were good. But not delivered in a style the most energetic. After meeting, instead of shaking hands in a free cordial kind of way as I was anticipating, his attention seemed rather taken up in some other way . . . I saw nothing particularly interesting or disagreeable in the man, tho I pretty much made up my mind that he was not a missionary, but rather an ordinary kind of unaspiring man who was anxious to be looking up a settlement.
Mary Richardson—April 22, 1837
In spite of the uncomfortable first meeting, Elkanah dared to return to the Richardson home later that same evening with Reverend Noah Emerson, pastor of the local Congregational Church. The men were to attend a missions meeting in the area and stay over at the Richardsons’ home. The following morning Mary and Elkanah had occasion to sit and talk about their desire to be missionaries to the “heathens.” After discussing their lives and discovering they shared a mutual friend, Elkanah made his intentions known to Mary.
“I suppose I am an accepted missionary,” he told her. “As I have no one engaged to go with me on my journey, I have come with the intention of offering myself to you.” Mary blushed, taken aback by his candor. Before she could respond to his bold declaration, her mother entered the room where the two were seated and invited them to join the other family members for breakfast prayer. Once the prayers were concluded, Mary excused herself from the others and returned to her room to think about the morning’s events.
