How to Get a Wife

Western pioneers took extreme measures to change their marital status.

The discovery of gold in the Western frontier led a mass migration of eager, optimistic men hoping to strike it rich. But they needed women. Some prospective grooms took out ads in East Coast papers (and sometimes in other countries) and wrote letters to churches, all in the hope there’d be some available unmarried woman who was up for adventure and blazing a trail herself. The wooing was usually done by letter—including the proposal. If she accepted, the man paid her way out West.