Book Review: “Matrimony, Inc: From Personal Ads to Swiping Right, a Story of America Looking for Love” by Francesca Beauman

“Matrimony, Inc: From Personal Ads to Swiping Right, a Story of America Looking for Love” by Francesca Beauman (2020)

Genre: History, Nonfiction

Page Length: 194 (paperback ARC edition)

Synopsis:

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, America’s 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 typesetter’s 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? (description from Goodreads)

Review:

My interest was piqued by this book because of my fascination with learning about history. I’ve always heard about personal ads in newspapers and mentioned in historical novels (more so, the mail bride order bride romance stories) and thought the subject was interesting. Considering how we’ve evolved over time when it comes to these ads and that they’ve now become dating apps it was interesting to see how it all got started.

Beauman takes readers from the early 1700s all the way to modern day in this short book. There’s a lot to cover in a small amount of text (it could easily be a 400 page book, I think) and I think she does it very well. Each chapter goes over the time period, the types of ads being placed, what society was like in that era, and things people were looking for in a relationship. I liked the incorporation of actual personal ad clippings, photos of people mentioned, and even personal stories of what happened to those that answered the ads.

Looking back at personal ads, it was pretty risky back then and there’s still risks now. The main advantage of technology being on our side. But reading about all the crime and murders that were initiated from the ads and the anonymity of marrying a total stranger was so scary! My favorite part was see how the text evolved in the ads of what some people were looking for a relationship (some were quite funny too). But I feel that at the base of everything, not much has really changed.

The only thing I would complain about the book is that some parts felt a bit bogged down by too many details, but I learned so much from this book! This was interesting read about love, relationships, personal ads, with lots of history.

Final Verdict: