Newspaper ads soliciting potential spouses. Somewhat amusing, I suppose, is the German working girl "anxious" to meet a mechanic, followed by an advertisement from a 36 year old mechanic looking for a "working girl". The typesetter had to have arranged that order intentionally.
This is a topic that tends to fascinate people as a relic of the past:
Mail Order Brides: When Wyoming Men Outnumbered Women 10-1, They ‘Imported Wives’
The truth of the matter is, of course, that since the Internet arrived, mail ordering spouses has returned. Witness the discussions on Reddit:
I am "mail order bride" ask me anything
20f Mail Order Bride, husband is 53 AMA
I'm 26 and married a mail order bride from Cambodia and I could not be happier - AMA
This, from a Thai in the AFA Reddit threads probably explains a lot of it currently:
If you want to get out of Thailand, you marry a foreigner. It's a better life for me, and my family as I bring them over. So my parents, my sisters and I are all here in the US now.
I met Paul online through a mail order bride agency when I was 16. We talked, and he flew here when I was 17 to meet me, and he met my family. He got the approval from my parents, and when I turned 18 we got married and he brought me to the US.
I have a nice house, a man who cares and takes care of me, and a good job. I don't think I would have this back in our home country. I'm glad for Paul, and everything he's done for us. So, I am happy.
Icky aspect of this aside. . . well maybe the whole thing is icky, this probably defines things in a way, then and now, for mail order brides. Economic desperation. Perhaps more then, a bit, than now, but both.
Men meeting their "mail order" spouse to be at Ellis Island. These women were from Armenia, Turkey, Greece and Romania, and likely were all Eastern Orthodox.
Gree, women entering the country to marry correspondent fiances.
The photos that were put up here, and the advertisement, show an aspect of this that was really significant at the time, and seems to be forgotten (including by current mail orders) that being religion and culture. The Greek women, at least three of whom appear to be very young, were escaping poverty, but they were marrying into their own culture. Pretty rough, but they were at least marrying somebody who spoke Greek and who was Greek Orthodox. Likely all the women in the first photograph were marrying somebody from their own culture as well. The advertisement, however, provides less of that, but some of it. Some men were just looking for somebody to marry. The Jewish man was looking for a Jewish woman, however. The German working girl, on the other hand, wanted a "mechanic" (somebody who worked with machinery) and a comfortable small home. Two men wanted widows for some reason, which would probably make sense if I knew the context (perhaps they wanted somebody who was used to be married and whom they didn't have to romance). Even where culture wasn't referenced, chances are they would likely be ofose cultures.
Of course, if you go further back, you can find more peculiar examples, such as the French "King's Daughters" who were sent to Quebec. Up to 1,000 of them were sent between 1663 and 1673, which followed prior private efforts starting in the 1640s. The King's Daughters were actually vetted for their future role, and were held to scrupulous standards based on their "moral calibre" and physically fitness. Authorities in Quebec actually sent some back that were found not to be vigorous enough, which presumably was disappointing for them.
What all of this says we could debate. Contrary to what some people like to assert, it's never been the case, ever, that regular people didn't marry for love. They always have. The thing is that modern people often have a hard time recognizing that in the conditions of earlier times.
Catholicism brought in the requirement that there be consent on the part of both parties in order for their to be a valid marriage, and after that marriage ages jumped to the current norms. Chances are pretty good that the way most couples relationships developed looked a lot more like what's depicted in Flipped, set in the 1950s, than Dirty Dancing or something. I.e, the ultimately married couple knew each other from childhood. That still occurs, of course, particularly in some communities. Doug Crowe's ribald A Growing Season references that being the case in ranching communities of the 1950s, and I'd seen the same thing as late as the 1990s. But where women were in short supply, desperate times always called for desperate measures.
Photograph from Montana, 1901. Clearly the man with the cat was the most eligible Batchelor.
Something that should be noted is that there was a pretty high incentive for women to marry prior to the 1920s, or even prior to the 1940s, in comparison to currently. Obviously marriage remains, but to be a "spinster" prior to the mid 20th Century came with a massive set of problems for the woman and her family. The classic Pride and Prejudice deals with this repeatedly as the failure of the Bennet sister to marry is creating an impending financial disaster for the family and Charlotte Lucas accepts a less than desirable proposal because, in part, she's a burden on her parents. Those concerns are subtle in the film, but they were real. The "German working girl" in the advertisement above was likely looking at serving out a life's sentence as a domestic servant if she couldn't find somebody to marry. Most women who weren't married lived at home, and when they aged into their 30s they were looking at taking on that role for increasingly elderly parents.
All of which raises the question, do you have a couple that met in your background this way? It'd be almost impossible to know, I'd think. Having said that, in thinking of it, my chances of being descended from a King's Daughter are fairly high and, while not really the same thing, one of my aunts who did a family genealogy claimed that one married couple we descend from did not speak the same language when they married, although her information was notoriously unreliable (the husband was Scottish, the wife Irish. . . I think they both clearly would have spoken English). On my wife's side, my father in law told me once that one set of his grandparents were both from Ohio originally, but that they had not met there. Somehow the bride was sent out to marry the groom, and they married.
