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Wild West Dating & Mail Order Brides: Tinder of the Old West
In this episode, Simone and her guest delve into the fascinating history of mail order brides in the Old West. They explore why men and women opted into these arrangements, what each gender valued in a partner, and how societal values have changed over time. The script covers a variety of firsthand accounts and marriage ads from the 1800s to early 1900s, highlighting the practical and often business-like nature of these unions. The hosts also discuss the broader cultural implications and talk about how modern individuals might learn from these historical practices.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today we are going to go into an interesting deep dive to learn more about dating in the old West. We are going to look at the widely practiced concept of mail order brides in the old West. Talked about why people opted into it, why they did it.
Review a lot of firsthand accounts of what men were looking for back then and what women were looking for to understand what they valued in a partner and how that has changed in society. Because I think that that's something to go back to, like different cultural periods to one, better understand our own ancestry because I think a lot of Americans have forgotten what their great grandparents valued, what they were looking for in partners, et cetera.
And we, we, through seeing different cultures, we can be like, oh, this is a different way to relate. To marriage and sexuality. And, and a lot of people would ask, they'd be like, how really, like women would do this. They would like get in a carriage and like drive out to meet with someone in the middle of nowhere in like the old west.
Like, weren't they afraid of like being turned into [00:01:00] like a sex slave and like chained up in the basement or something. And it's like, well actually there wasn't that much risk of that because that was sort of like a strictly like worse value proposition for a guy than a wife. Sex slaves are very high maintenance.
Especially if you're living on the frontier, like yeah, they're
Simone Collins: not doing that much work, which is, I mean, I guess you could, you could force them to work. There was like that, that tragic story recently of the. Mm. Well now man, but who had been trapped in his house for a long period of time and he was occasionally let out to clean the house.
So he did do some housework, but then otherwise he was in his room. Yeah. That's
Malcolm Collins: strictly less like even if they were just cleaning the house, that's strictly lesser than you can get out of a dedicated wife who like you, you dedicated part of your time to. Right. You know, like you get a lot more labor out of her just by being nice.
So we'll, we'll get to like the dynamics of this, although there was an instance. Where a woman did get married to a nice guy, only to realize shortly after her wedding, and we'll go into this case in a bit, that he had robbed her stage coach on the way over, not knowing it was his future wife, [00:02:00] and he was just on the low down, also a stage coach robber.
Oh, oops. Well, he was nice about it too. He didn't know it was gonna be his future wife, and he let her keep her wedding outfit and everything. And Oh, that's, she was like, oh, I'm gonna get married. And then he's like, oh, yeah. He's like, I can just imagine his face when she arrives, like, oh, sh uhoh, uhoh.
What a start, huh? That's, that's before getting into all of that. I want go into some marriage in the old West. Okay. Rucks coffee, coupons and rings. In late 18 hundreds, rucks Coffee was a dominant brand across the American frontier, especially among cowboys, homesteaders, and miners. Coffee was a staple, and Arbuckle stood out by including redeemable coupons or premiums in their three pound bags.
These weren't just throwaways. Think of them as loyalty points. Customers collected them to
Published on 8 months, 1 week ago