These Family Secrets Are Terrifying

Ordering a Mail Order Bride

A mail order bride is a woman who comes from a different country and is basically purchased for marriage by a man who wants to have an instant bride. Obviously, this method of forming a lasting relationship doesn’t make much sense, but many men feel it is the easiest way for them to get what they want—an attractive wife.

So here, this person explains how this whole situation went for their grandfather. “Around 1910, after a few years of living alone in a sod hut, he basically ordered a mail-order bride from the U.S. — a girl from the same national/ethnic group as him. She moved to the wilds of Alberta without ever having met him and they married. After doing some digging, we discovered that my mother’s eldest sibling was born in western Canada only a couple of months after my grandmother arrived at the homestead. My granny wanted to escape the shame of being an unwed mother.”