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Object Matrimony:
The Risky Business of Mail-Order Matchmaking on the Western Frontier
Deacon Joe Sleet’s correspondence with widow Nellie Wallace was full of promise for the future. When they began writing one another in late 1925, Mrs. Wallace had hoped to find a man who would love and care for her as her deceased husband once had. When she placed an ad in the “Get Acquainted” section of a western magazine and the deacon responded she believed he was the answer to her heart’s longing. “I’m not a flapper,” her advertisement read, “but I would like to exchange letters with a man between the age of twenty-five and thirty-two. I want a husband good and true, there is a chance it might be you,” the notice concluded.
Twenty-two-year-old Nellie Wallace lived in Tchula, Mississippi 1,500 miles from Joe Sleet’s home in El Paso, Texas. Of all the letters she received in reply to her ad, Joe struck her fancy completely. In a short time, Nellie was writing Joe to the exclusion of anyone else. Through his letters she learned that he was a deacon in the Baptist church and that he was a widower. Nellie confided in him that she too was the victim of a sad romance, her husband having died some years ago.
The correspondence was hardly a month old before Joe had been granted permission to call his fair correspondent “Sweetheart.” Another week and respective photographs were exchanged; still another and a row of x’s appeared at the bottom of their letters. Another month passed and more letters were delivered at the Sleet home. In one of those letters Nellie admitted there was a “spark of love aglow,” in her heart.
The fervor of the letters increased with their frequency. Then came the inevitable exchange of locks of hair with Nellie giving an accurate description of herself. She informed Joe she was five feet, eight inches tall, weighed 180 pounds but being tall, did not look obese. “And goodness knows,” the account concluded, “I like to eat.” Her devotion to the truth did not quench the flame of Joe’s growing love for Nellie. “Sweetheart,” he replied, “your age, weight, hair, eyes and everything is all right with me if you will only make some suggestion about the ‘yes’ part of it. Say ‘yes’ now, Nellie. Your loving Joe.”
To learn more about mail order weddings and divorces read
Object Matrimony:
The Risky Business of Mail-Order Matchmaking on the Western Frontier
