Jewish Mail-Order Brides on the American Frontier

There are many stereotypes of Jewish women, and mail-order bride isn’t one of them. But in the 19th century, some left Eastern Europe for the American frontier, where they married men they’d never met.

Tablet Magazine
by Anna Solomon

The phrase “mail-order bride” always conjured certain associations for me—desperate, uneducated, sexually submissive women, and the desperate, misogynistic men who order them—but Jewish wasn’t one of them.

Then, a few years ago, in a quiet moment, I was Googling myself—as if you’ve never done it—when, along with an L.A. real-estate agent and a Brooklyn social worker, another, more curious Anna Solomon appeared. This Anna Solomon was featured on a website about Jewish women pioneers to the American West, a category I’d never known existed. Along with Anna—who, with her husband, Isadore, founded the town of Solomonville, Ariz., in 1876—a number of other Jewish women were toughing it out on the frontier, including Rachel Bella Kahn, who came to America in 1894 as a mail-order bride for Abraham Calof of Devil’s Lake, N.D.
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