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Matrimony, Inc.
Matrimony, Inc.: From Personal Ads to Swiping Right, A Story of America Looking for Love | Francesca Beauman
3 posts | 2 read | 1 to read
A clever, thoughtful, and funny history that reveals how the Union of states was built on a much more personal union of people. Have you ever used a dating app or website? Then you have more in common than you know with lonely homesteaders in 18th century New England. At once heartwarming and heartbreaking, Matrimony, Inc. reveals the unifying thread that weaves its way through not just marriage and relationships over the centuries, but American social history itself: advertising for love. Amazingly, Americas first personal ad appeared in the Boston Evening Post as early as 1759. A person who flatters himself that he shall not be thought disagreeable was in search of a young lady, between the age of eighteen and twenty-three, of a middling stature, brown hair, of good Morals As family-arranged marriages fell out of fashion, "Husband Wanted" or "Seeking Wife" ads were soon to be found in every state in the nation. From the woman in a Wisconsin newspaper who wanted no brainless dandy or foppish fool to the man with a glass eye who placed an ad in the New York Times hoping to meet a woman with a glass eye, the many hundreds of personal ads that author Francesca Beauman has uncovered offer an extraordinary glimpse into the history of our hearts desires, as well as a unique insight into American life as the frontier was settled and the cities grew. Personal ads played a surprisingly vital role in the West: couple by couple, shy smile by shy smile, letter by letter from a dusty, exhausted miner in California to a bored, frustrated seamstress in Ohio. Get ready for a new perspective on the making of modern America, a hundred words of typesetters blurry black ink at a time. So anxious are our settlers for wives that they never ask a single lady her age. All they require is teeth, declared the Dubuque Iowa News in 1838 in a state where men outnumbered women three to one. While the dating pools of 21st century New York, Chicago or San Francisco might not be quite so dentally-fixated, Matrimony Inc. will put idly swiping right on Tinder into fascinating and vividly fresh historical context. What do women look for in a man? What do men look for in a woman? And how has this changed over the past 250 years?
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NotCool
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Advertising for love became an essential element of urbanized society-like a postal service or sewer system, but sexier.

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Reecaspieces
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A book Spotlight is up on my blog. Check it out. This sounds adorable!

https://reecaspieces.com/2020/10/21/matrimony-inc-by-francesca-beauman-from-pers...

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SilversReviews
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Looks good.

Check out the full post here: https://tinyurl.com/y4tkf85n

“A clever, thoughtful, and funny history that reveals how the Union of states was built on a much more personal union of people.

MATRIMONY, INC.

From Personal Ads to Swiping Right, A Story of America Looking for Love”**

**Quote courtesy of Molly Concannon of @wunderbookspr

@fransbookshop
#francescabeauman