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Hearts West:  True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier

The New Plan was a mail-order catalog/newspaper that was in circulation from 1911 to 1917.  The following are a few samples of advertisements found in the September 1917 edition of the periodical.

Ad #101  Everybody says that I’m fine looking for my age; am honest, intelligent, neat and clean, kind-hearted and have a good character.  Age, 58; weight, 120; height 5 feet 2 inches; blue eyes; brown hair; fine homemaker.  Income, $200 per year.  Have real estate worth $4,000.  Object matrimony.  Will answer all letters.

Ad #102  A winsome miss of 22; very beautiful, jolly and entertaining; fond of home and children; from good family; American; Christian; blue eyes; golden hair; fair complexion; pleasant disposition; play piano.  Will inherit $10,000.  Also have means of $1,000.  None but men of good education need to write from 20 to 38 years of age.

Ad #103  Would like to get married, because I’m lonesome.  Am considered rather good looking and of a lovable disposition.  Age, 35; height, 5 feet 5 inches; weight 145; hazel eyes; brown hair; American; occupation, stenographer and bookkeeper.  Will inherit a few thousand.  Will answer all letters.

Ad #104  Lonely in Pennsylvania.  Society has no charms for me; prefer a quiet life.  Am an American lady, with common school education; well thought of and respected; age 25; height 5 feet 9 inches; weight, 155; blue eyes; light hair.  Have means of $3,000.  Wish correspondence with good natured, honest, industrious man.

Ad #105 A perfect blonde; trained nurse, wishes to make the acquaintance of a nice young gentlemen, view to matrimony; age 23, weight 124, height 5 feet 3 inches; German-American; college education, very neat dresser; will answer all letters.

To learn more about lonely hearts in the Old West read

Hearts West:  True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier

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Tears slid down widow Mabel Haskell’s face and fell onto the blank piece of paper in front of her.  She sat poised, pen in hand over the monogrammed stationary, contemplating her life and lamenting her cheerless state of affairs.  The sad but striking-looking woman in her late forties had no family, no children of her own, and had lost her husband of twenty-three years ten months earlier.  She was lonely and fearful that she would always remain so.

Desperate for companionship, Mabel decided to advertise for a partner.  She knew other women whose solicitation for a spouse had been answered and a handful of those were fortunate enough to marry the men who replied.  Mabel wondered if she would be as lucky.  Blinking away tears, she decided the time was right to submit an ad to the popular publication The New Plan.  Perhaps an equally lonely gentleman would read the personal plea and seek her out.  Perhaps she would find love again.

Helping eligible men and women find one another, correspond, and marry was the main goal of The New Plan.  Published in Kansas City, Missouri, the magazine’s purpose was to unite lonely hearts, with various momentary and social background, who were unable to find a desirable life partner.

Ladies especially, whose opportunities are somewhat limited as to forming acquaintances, seek the method (proposed in The New Plan) knowing that in no other way have they so much advantage.  Don’t think because you are not wealthy yourself that you cannot get a rich party to marry you.  Love is not measured in lucre.  Morality, fidelity, respectability, ambition and beauty often tip the opposing weight of wealth on the matrimonial scale.  Women in affluent circumstances are not usually seeking an increase of wealth in marriage.  The self-respecting man of means, in seeking a wife is not seeking her for the property she may have.  We get many inquiries from both sexes who have plenty of means for two and who seek life companions of true worth and not for means.  We do business with such people constantly and know whereof we speak.  The New Plan Notice – 1917

The New Plan was circulated from 1911 to 1917.  The following are samples of advertisements found in the September 1917 edition of the periodical.  The first advertisement was submitted by Mabel Haskell.

Ad #1 – I am a lonely unemcumbered widow; age 48; weight 165; height, 5 feet 6 inches; big blue eyes; brown hair; fair complexion; American; religion, Methodist.  I have property worth $30,000.  A sunny disposition; considered very good looking.  Would like to hear from some good business man.  Object, matrimony.

Ad #2 – I do not pose as a beauty, but people tell me that I look well.  Enjoy fun and social gatherings.  Age, 27; weight 138; height, 64 inches; brown eyes; brown hair; fair complexion; American; very good disposition; plain dresser, but neat.  Prefer country life.  Income $20 per month.  Matrimonially inclined.

Ad #3 – A perfect blonde; trained nurse, wishes to make the acquaintance of a nice young gentlemen, view to matrimony; age 23, weight 124, height 5 feet 3 inches; German-American; college education, very neat dresser; will answer all letters.

To learn more about women and men seeking a spouse in the

Old West read

Hearts West:  True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier

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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.

Here are a few of the ads posted in the January 8, 1887, edition of Matrimonial News.

283 – A gentlemen of 25 years old, 5 feet 3 inches, doing a good business in the city, desires the acquaintance of a young, intelligent and refined lady possessed of some means, of a loving disposition from 18 to 23, and one who could make a home a paradise.

287 – An intelligent young fellow of 22 years, 6 feet height, weight 170 pounds.  Would like to correspond with a lady from 18 to 22 years.  Will exchange photos:  object, fun and amusement, and perhaps when acquainted, if suitable, matrimony.

245 – I am 48, fat, fair, and plan on losing no weight.  Am a No. 1 lady, well fixed with no encumbrances:  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 gentleman 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 old:  working men preferred.

To read more Old West advertisements read

Hearts West:  True Stories of Mail Order Brides on the Frontier.

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In the early days of westward travel, when men and women left behind their homes and acquaintances in search of wealth and happiness, there was a recognized need for some method of honorable introduction between the sexes.  This need was readily fulfilled by the formation of a periodical devoted entirely to the advancement of marriage.  Throughout the 1870s, 80s and 90s, that periodical, to which many unattached men and women subscribed, was a newspaper called Matrimonial News.  The paper was printed in San Francisco, California, and Kansas City, Missouri.  It was issued once a week and the paper’s editors proclaimed that the intent of the material was the happiness of its readers.

According to the Matrimonial News business manager, Stark Taylor, the paper would “bring letters from a special someone to desiring subscribers in hopes that a match would be made and the pair would spend the rest of their life together.”

Fair and gentle reader, can we be useful to you?  Are you a stranger desiring a helpmate or searching for agreeable company that may in the end ripen into closer ties?  If so, send us a few lines making known your desires.  Are you bashful and dread publicity?  Be not afraid.  You need not disclose to use your identity.  Send along your correspondence accompanied by five centers for every seven words, and we will publish it under an alias and bring about correspondence in the most delicate fashion.  To cultivate the noble aim of life and help men and women into a state of bliss is our aim.

A code of rules and regulations, posted in each edition of the paper, was strictly enforced.  All advertisers were required to provide information on their personal appearance, height, weight, and their financial and social positions, along with a general description of the kind of persons with whom they desired correspondence.  Gentlemen’s personals of forty words or under were published once for twenty-five cents in stamps or postage.  Ladies’ personals of forty words or under were published free of charge.  Any advertisements over forty words, whether for ladies or gentlemen, were charged a rate of one cent for each word.

The personal ads were numbered, to avoid publishing names and addresses.  Replies to personals were to be sent to the Matrimonial News office sealed in an envelope with the number of the ad on the outside.

Every edition of the Matrimonial News began with the same positive affirmation: “Women need a man’s strong arm to support her in life’s struggle, and men need a woman’s love.”

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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 scared 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.

Eliza 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 women.  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 the trip was to be his last attempt at supplying a rather urgent demand.

To learn more about Mercer’s Maids and other mail order brides read Hearts West.