by Chris Enss
280 - A lively widower of 40, looking much younger, 5 feet 7 inches high, weighing 145 pounds would like to correspond with some maiden or widow lady of honor who would like a good home, kind husband and plenty.
281 - A miller by trade having some means strictly temperate. 30 years old, brunette would like to correspond with a good-looking lady of some means; object matrimony.
An unidentified mail-order bride submitted this photograph to the Kansas City edition of the Matrimonial News in 1890.
NEVADA COUNTY SEARLS HISTORICAL LIBRARY
225 - I am fond of fun, age 18, height 5 feet 5 inches, weight 140 pounds, have auburn hair, dark eyes; I want a gentleman correspondent, from 20 to 25. Object, fun and perhaps matrimony if suited.
221 - A widow of 28. 5 feet 2 inches tall, black eyes and hair, weighing 125 pounds, wishes to make the acquaintance of some dark complexioned gentlemen of 25 to 45; am a first rate housekeeper.
The Kansas City edition of the Matrimonial News published photographs of prospective brides like this young woman.
NEVADA COUNTY SEARLS HISTORICAL LIBRARY
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 and weight not less than 180. Of good habits. A Christian gentlemen preferred.
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 of 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 pounds, 4 feet and 5 inches in height: am brunette and have very fine black hair.
292 - A girl who will love, honest, true and not sour; a nice little cooing dove, and willing to work in flour.
It is estimated that in the three decades the paper was in existence more than 2,600 couples who advertised with the newspaper corresponded, exchanged photos, and eventually married.
This warning appeared as an insert in several editions of the Matrimonial News in the 1870s.
NEVADA COUNTY SEARLS HISTORICAL LIBRARY
PHOEBE HARRINGTON & WILLIAM SILBAUGH
The Hopeful Bride and the Farmer
William Silbaugh stopped to examine his reflection in a mercantile window. He smoothed his hair back and ran a finger over his bushy mustache. Confident that he looked presentable, he brushed down the wrinkles in his brown tweed suit and headed toward the train depot. The streets of Shoshone, Idaho, in 1911 were teeming with people going to work, shopping, and hurrying off to school. Lost in thought and feeling a bit anxious, William looked past his bustling surroundings and toward his future a few hundreds yards away, where the eastern bride he had ordered would be arriving on the afternoon train. Before the day was over, he would be a married man.
William Henry Silbaugh was born and raised around Bruceton Mills, West Virginia. Poor health, however, drove him to a drier climate, and he settled in Idaho in 1906, where he was employed as a surveyor of town sites in various parts of the state. While reviewing the thoroughfares of Jerome, Idaho, he decided he needed a wife. He asked his aunt in West Virginia to shop for a woman for him, and to send the candidate on once she met with her approval.
Armed only with a written description of his mail-order bride, he scanned the faces of the passengers staring out the train, as it slowed to a stop. He recognized his wife-to-be as she stepped out of the car and onto the depot walkway. Phoebe Harrington was a seventeen-year-old woman with a tiny waist and a petite frame. The two exchanged pleasantries, collected her bags, and then walked down the street to the justice of the peace.
William and Phoebe had known each other less than an hour when they exchanged vows. After the quick ceremony, William helped his bride into a buckboard and escorted her to his farm twenty miles away.
Phoebe drank in the scenery as they made their way to Appleton, Idaho. The landscape was substantially different from the area of Pennsylvania from which she hailed. She believed the move West was necessary for her to improve her life’s standing. She was one of six children in her family, and her mother had died when Phoebe was eleven years old. Shortly thereafter she went to work as a domestic servant to help support her brothers and sisters. After sixteen years working as a maid, she was presented with an opportunity she hoped would improve her situation. She responded to an advertisement for a wife and was selected to travel to Idaho to marry a twenty-year-old farmer with land and promise.
The homestead William owned was located in Magic Valley. It was his belief—as well as that of other area farmers—that the rich, virgin soil would produce healthy crops of wheat, potatoes, alfalfa, beans, peaches, and apples. The fields had yet to be plowed, but Phoebe could imagine their potential as William described how the landscape would look.
The Silbaughs set up house in a small, windowless, two-room shack north of the Snake River. When Phoebe wasn’t busy cooking, sewing, and cleaning, she worked in her garden and helped William keep the crops irrigated. In addition to maintaining the farm, William cared for a herd of sheep. The sheep sustained the Silbaughs during the time they struggled to grow their crops. In spite of the euphoric name given to the valley, and all the newlyweds’ efforts, the land would not yield quality produce.
Hope for the Silbaughs’ forty acres began to dwindle, but their family grew. Nine months after the young couple was married, Phoebe gave birth to the first of their seven children. After twenty-five years of struggling to make the farm a minor success, William decided to move his wife and children north to a ranch near the town of Salmon.
The Silbaughs’ fourteen-acre spread rested on Fourth of July Creek. There was plenty of water for crops and pasture for the sheep. In a short time, Phoebe and the Silbaugh family were living the life William had dreamed of providing for them.
In 1958, William and his mail-order bride celebrated forty-seven years of marriage. Their time together ended when William was killed in a car accident. Phoebe died sixteen years later of heart failure at eighty-one years old.
THE FORLORN BRIDE
A brassy sun was beginning to lengthen the morning shadows when Mary Zadow raced out of her parents’ home, gasping for breath. Her pretty face was pale and strands of her long, dark, curly hair clung to the sweat on her cheeks and neck. Her eyes were swollen with tears as she dropped to her knees and clutched her chest. Mary’s mother, Ester, was standing on the neighbor’s porch when she saw her daughter collapse. She hurried over to her child and fell down beside her. “I told you I would do it,” Mary gasped. “I told you!” Ester brushed the fifteen-year-old girl’s hair out of her face and laid her down in the grass. Mary’s eyes closed.
“Hurry!” Ester shouted to her neighbor friend who was watching the incident curiously. “Bring me a mustard and vinegar mixture! Please hurry!” The frantic mother gently shook her daughter, and Mary’s eyes gradually opened. “It’s no use,” Mary told Ester. “I’m dying.” Tears burst from Ester’s eyes and she shook her daughter again as she called out for the neighbor to hurry along. “Goodbye,” Mary said softly. She exhaled one last time and then passed from this life. Ester wept bitterly as she rocked her child’s body back and forth.
Citizens around the Zadow residence in the mining town of Iowa Hill emerged from their homes to see what all the commotion was about. One by one they ventured over to the grieving mother. Their hearts broke as they watched Ester clutch Mary to her breast.
When the Zadows ventured west from Ohio in 1863, they imagined a prosperous life in California for themselves and their three children. It was Mary who finally convinced her parents to move from their farm and
try their hands at gold mining. She read newspaper articles to her father, Albert, that described the Gold Country as “heaven on earth.” The same articles boasted that fortunes could be made not only panning for gold but working the rich soil around the diggings. Albert reasoned that if he did not hit the mother lode, he could return to farming and provide pioneers with fruit and vegetables. Mary was elated about the move, but the source of her excitement had more to do with a young man than the adventures to be had crossing the plains.
Unbeknownst to either of her parents, Mary had been corresponding with a twenty-eight-year-old man named Calvin Howell. Calvin had placed an ad in the Matrimonial News, looking for a wife. He lived in the tiny mining town of Ophir, near Auburn, California, and had his own mining claim. According to his ad, he wanted “a sweet someone to share his earnings and future with.” Mary responded to his advertisement and the two wrote to one another for three months before Calvin asked her to marry him. Neither Ester nor Albert could read so they believed Mary when she told them the letters she received were from one of her teachers who had moved to San Francisco.
Mary accepted Calvin’s proposal, but decided to keep the engagement a secret until her family arrived in California. Her journal reads that she was “afraid her parents would object to their union because of her young age.” Mary believed that their hearts would soften once they met Calvin and saw how deeply they cared for one another.
Four days after the Zadows arrived in Iowa Hill, Calvin Howell came calling. Neither Mary nor Calvin was disappointed in how the other looked. On the contrary, both were instantly smitten and fell easily into conversation about the trip and the area.
Albert and Ester were not as impressed with Calvin. After confessing that the claim he had been working for more than a year had yielded only a small amount of gold, the Zadows decided he would ultimately not be able to provide their daughter with even the basic comforts. Calvin assured them that his claim would pay off eventually and that he would give Mary the world. Even if Calvin had been solvent, however, there was the matter of age difference. Mary was thirteen years younger than Calvin and her parents would not consent to the union. Mary pleaded and cried, but Albert remained steadfast in his decision. Calvin sadly left the Zadow home, fearing he would never see Mary again.
The Zadow family settled into the Iowa Hill community, going about their day-to-day business and believing that the notion of marrying Calvin Howell had been erased from Mary’s thoughts. It had not. She pined for Calvin and reread his letters over and over. He did the same with her letters.
Several weeks after their first meeting, Calvin made another appeal to Albert and Ester. This time he brought a couple of local citizens with him to vouch for his honorable character. The Zadows again refused to let their daughter go. A longing glance passed between Calvin and Mary at that meeting, and in that look was the determination to do whatever it took to be together.
On a warm Sunday morning in August, two months after the Zadows arrived in California, the family prepared to attend church services. Mary pretended to be too ill to go along. She encouraged her parents and two brothers to leave her behind. Just as the family buggy disappeared from sight, Mary raced out the back door and hurried off to find Calvin.
Calvin saw Mary running up the gravel road towards his claim and he hurried out to meet her. The couple embraced and proclaimed their love for one another. It was the first of many secret rendezvous.
At home, Mary tried in vain to convince her mother and father to allow her to see Calvin, but they maintained their position. Mary threatened to kill herself if they wouldn’t let her be with Calvin. They dismissed the warning as “overemotional hysterics” and sent her to her room.
During one of the couple’s clandestine meetings, Mary told Calvin about a dog in the neighborhood that was bothering her.
“He’s mean and I’m afraid he’s going to bite me,” she wrote in her journal about what she told Calvin. He informed her that “a pinch of arsenic is the best way to handle such a beast.” And as promised, he provided her with a small bag of arsenic at their next visit.
“Why can’t my folks see that I love him?” she noted in her journal. “I’ve got to make them see how much he means to me . . . or die trying,” she vowed. No amount of talk or tears would change her parents’ minds. “You’re too young,” they insisted.
On the day Mary felt she had no choice but to take her own life, she watched her mother head out the front door and cross over to the neighbors’ home. With tears streaming down her face, she poured half the arsenic Calvin had given her into a glass of water and drank the poison down.
The news of Mary’s demise devastated Calvin. After attending her funeral, he locked himself inside his cabin near his claim. When his friends dropped by to check on him three days later, they found him dead. A mixture of water and arsenic was spilled next to Calvin’s body. Nearby, the note he left behind revealed what had happened. “I’m sorry,” the note read. “But I’ve gone to be with Mary.”
BETHENIA OWENS-ADAIR & LEGRAND HILL
The Doctor and the Farmer
On May 4th, with only our old friends, the Perrys, and the minister present, beside our own family, we were married. I was still small for my age. My husband was five-feet eleven inches in height, and I could stand under his outstretched arm.
Bethenia Owens-Adair—1854
Fifteen-year-old Bethenia Owens-Hill stared out the window of her husband’s aunt’s farmhouse, rocking her infant son to sleep. A brisk wind pelted the glass with sand and dust. Drought-twisted sagebrush tumbled past her bleak, hazy view and continued on. Bethenia’s baby whimpered a bit and she kissed his tiny forehead. Tears drifted down her face and she brushed them away with the back of her hand. Her Aunt Kelly entered the room from the kitchen and placed a pot of stew on a neatly set table. Bethenia turned away from her aunt, hoping she wouldn’t be caught crying, but it was too late. The concerned woman gently walked over to her distressed niece and put a comforting arm around her.
“Now Bethenia,” she said kindly, “You just give him to me. I’ll take him, and educate him, and make him my heir. I’ll give him all I have, and that’s more than his father will ever do for him.”
“My baby is too precious to give to anyone,” Bethenia replied in a hurt voice. “You seem to think that will make things all right.” The young mother sobbed into her child’s blanket. Her aunt apologized and tried to persuade her to eat something. Bethenia declined, choosing instead to pace the floors with her baby boy.
When Bethenia’s parents arranged for their daughter to marry Legrand Hill, a farmer who had advertised for a bride in the Oregon newspapers in February of 1854, they never imagined the union would turn out to be such an unhappy one and that Bethenia would be left to raise her son alone.
Bethenia Angelina Owens was one of nine children born to Thomas and Sarah Damron Owens in February 1840. When Bethenia was three, her father moved the family from Van Buren County, Missouri, to Clatsop, Oregon. The Owens crossed the plains with the first emigrant wagon trains of 1843. Thomas came west to acquire a large parcel of land the government had encouraged pioneers to claim on the new frontier. Settling at the mouth of the Columbia River, the Owens entered into the cattle ranching profession.
As the second oldest child in the family, Bethenia was given the job of babysitter for her younger brothers and sisters, while her mother and older sister helped work the ranch. According to her memoirs she often had one of her siblings in her arms and more clinging to her.
Where there is a baby every two years, there is always no end of nursing to be done; especially when mother’s time is occupied, as it was then, every minute, from early morning till late at night, with much outdoor as well as indoor work. She [Bethenia’s mother] seldom found time to devote to the baby, except to give it the breast.
Bethenia Owens-Adair—October 1906
&n
bsp; Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair
OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY, NEGATIVE #4062
Bethenia was barely fourteen when she first made the acquaintance of Legrand Hill. He had been living in the Rogue River Valley for a year and working his parents’ land. He was a handsome man, broad-shouldered and tall. When she looked into his eyes, she saw the promise of a long and happy life. Her parents had selected this man to be her husband and she trusted their decision. On their recommendation she eagerly placed her future in Legrand’s hands. On May 4, 1854, the petite teenager, dressed in a sky-blue wedding dress, stood next to her groom and promised to be a faithful wife.
After the ceremony the pair retired to their home in the middle of 320 acres of farmland Legrand had purchased on credit. The newlyweds lived four miles from Bethenia’s parents and in the beginning, all was right with the world. Family and friends visited often, helping Legrand work the property and assisting Bethenia as she made repairs to their small log cabin.
I had high hopes and great expectations for the future. My husband was a strong, healthy man; I had been trained to work, and bred to thrift and economize, and everything looked bright and beautiful to me. My soul overflowed with love and hope, and I could sing the dear old home-songs from morning to night.
