Enter to win a library of books about mail-order brides and romance on the frontier.
The following is an advertisement placed in a Marysville, California newspaper in April 1849. “A Husband Wanted: By a lady who can wash, cook, scour, sew, milk, spin, weave, hoe, (can’t plow), cut wood, make fires, feed the pigs, raise the chickens, rock the cradle, (gold-rocker, I thank you sir!), saw a plank, drive nails, etc. These are a few solid branches; now for the ornamental. “Long time ago” she went as far as syntax, read Murray’s Geography and through rules in Pike’s Grammar and could find six states on the Atlas. Could read, and you can see she can write. Can – no, could paint roses, butterflies, ships, etc. and a great many things too numerous to be named here. Now for her terms; her age is none of your business. She is neither handsome nor a fright, yet an old man need not apply, nor any who have not a little more education than she has. There must be $20,000 settled on her before she will bind herself to perform all the above.”
Read a variety of mail-order bride and groom ads in the books Hearts West: True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier or Object: Matrimony: The Risky Business of Mail-Order Matchmaking on the Frontier.
Drawing will be held on Friday, March 14.
