Love and Marriage Frontier Style

Contrary to what you might think in 1850, the ratio of male-female on the frontier was about even at 106:100.  This small surplus of men gave single women a bit of freedom to pick and choose her husband to be.  Couple this with a falling birth rate and the process was becoming a "more mutual decision".

Many people think that women in the pioneer times married at age 14 or 15 and that they began to bear children regularly.  That may not have been the case at all with pioneers who believed in limiting the size of families for economic reasons...or maybe they were just to worn out at the end of the day!

In 1800 the average size of families was 7 children, by 1860 that number was 6 children, and in 1880 it had fallen again to 4 children.

On the frontier, women married in late teens and early 20s.  Widows with property were reluctant to remarry at all.  Marriage was considered a working partnership rather than a romantic ideal.  Phoebe Judson wrote in her journal "the inconveniences of our environment and the constant drudgery eventually took all the romance and poetry out of our life"  Both sexes looked for partners who were both industrious and competent in the everyday life of the frontier.  What a basis for marriage!

Next time ...The Weight of Childbearing on the Frontier