Tobacco Wives and King’s Daughters

Buck Wyatt (Robert Taylor, right) and Roy Whitman (John McIntire, left) greet a room of  potential “mail order” brides in a Westward the Women lobby card. (The photos on the board show “picture grooms.”)

The story of how female immigrants made their way to America—and how single immigrant women learned about American ways, and found mates—has always interested me.
I know from my Italian family that sometimes women from the “old country” would travel to the Americas, to marry men they had never met (after very short courtships).
It may seem odd, but this is my Valentine’s Day memorandum.

For a woman to locate a man to marry on her own wasn’t the norm in human societies.
Worldwide, many marriages were arranged by parents, or by religious elders.
In the royal and aristocratic families of Europe, marriages were arranged to keep a select group of bloodlines in control.
However, generally couples saw each other—at least a few times—before they wed.

The DVD for America’s Last Little Italy: The Hill, a 2020 documentary on the St. Louis “Little Italy.”

The subject of the 2020 documentary America’s Last Little Italy: The Hill is the “Little Italy” in St. Louis, MO.
One story is that of “picture brides,” Italian maidens who immigrated to St. Louis to marry specific Italian men.
These arrangements were mainly made from the late 1800s through the early 1900s.
Usually, the women came from the same provinces (or villages) in Lombardy or Sicily, as their prospective bridegrooms.
(Other immigrant cultures, that used the “picture bride” idea, included Japan and Korea.)

When the Americas were settled by various European groups, there were many more men than women.
When you consider that so many women died in childbirth, this was a really big issue.
At first, there was intermarriage with Native Americans, but ruling groups found that to be problematic.
(It was felt that such marriages made the settlements less English, French, and Spanish.)
Governments, and private companies, didn’t want blended societies (European/indigenous) in the “New World.”
They desired societies that were mirror images of their own, back in Europe.
Thus, TPTB sought helpmates for the lonely men who farmed the land (and stole it from indigenous peoples) among the “less prosperous classes” of European women.

The Virginia Company (founded in 1606) was in charge of sections of the North American coast until 1624.
It recruited indentured servants, and “Tobacco Wives” (1620, Jamestown) as marriage partners for the settlers.
Later, the British government transported female convicts to the thirteen colonies (as indentured servants), many of whom also married farmers or started their own farms.
(Women were called “Tobacco Wives,” because sometimes the tobacco farmer husbands paid for their wives’ expenses in tobacco leaves.)

The French handled the issue in a more respectful manner than the British.
From 1663 to 1673, women were shipped to New France to marry French Canadian farmers. These women were called Filles du Roi (King’s Daughters), and many were orphans.
(Some women were as young as 16, but the average age was 24.)
Unlike the English bride program, which was done on the cheap, these women were given a trousseau that included a hope chest, a wardrobe of clothing, and sewing supplies.
Over 40% brought along a modest dowry for their new husbands, given by the French government.

In the early days of colonial America (if they weren’t indentured servants, or tobacco wives), nearly all women arrived with husbands.
Between 1900-1910 (according to Mark Wyman’s Round Trip to America), only 30% of all immigrants were women, a big share to work as house servants, factory women, housewives, and shop girls.
The female to male ratio was higher than 30% for some countries (like Austria and Hungary), and as low as 95.7% male to 4.3% female for Serbs and Bulgarians.
(Workers from Serbia and Bulgaria usually didn’t bring wives, or marry here; they tended to go back to their home countries, after they’d earned a nest egg.)

Potential Chinese female immigrants were treated much worse than European women.
As Reese Jones describes in his book White Borders,* government officials assumed they were prostitutes.
The Page Act of 1875 (the first U.S. restrictive immigration law) focused on Chinese women as “as vectors of disease, as agents of moral decline, and of literally diluting the white race through pregnancy and mixed-race children.”
As a result, Chinese women were asked to prove that they weren’t prostitutes with “intrusive interviews and embarrassing medical examinations.”

One of my favorite films on mail-order brides, is 1951’s Westward the Women.
In it, an Italian widow with a young son, and a “fancy woman” who works in saloons—Mrs. Moroni (Renata Vanni) and Fifi Danon (Paris-born Denice Darcel)—represent immigrant women who traveled to the American West.
Mrs. Moroni speaks little English and Mr. Moroni likely died soon after the family arrived in America.
Miss Fifi Danon worked, so she’s fluent in English.

In Westward the Women, Italian widow Mrs. Moroni (Renata Vanni), and her son, are interviewed by Roy Whitman (John McIntire), the man in charge of a “mail-order” bride wagon train to California.

In Westward the Women, Mrs. Moroni and Miss Danon are two of 138 women journeying (from Chicago) to become brides in a remote area of California.
Farmer Roy Whitman (John McIntire) and cowboy Buck Wyatt (Robert Taylor) organize a wagon train to bring the brides to Whitman’s town—a town filled with lonely cowboys, farmers, and storekeepers.
The movie seems loosely based on the successful Benton brother trip from Maryland to Oregon, and the not-as-successful Asa Mercer expeditions (1864-1866) from Boston to Seattle.

Poster for Zandy’s Bride, with Hannah Lund (Liv Ullmann) and Zandy Allen (Gene Hackman).

The fractured glass in the picture frame is symbolic of their relationship.

Another favorite movie on women marrying “strange men” is 1974’s Zandy’s Bride.
In this frontier drama—set in 1890s Big Sur Country—Hannah Lund (Liv Ullmann) is a mail-order bride (originally from Sweden), and Gene Hackman is Zandy Allan, her socially-inept, misogynist bridegroom.
This Western was based on the novel The Stranger, by Lillian Bos Ross.
It’s interesting that Zandy sends for a Swedish bride, when there’s a Latina (Maria Cordova, played by non-Latina Susan Tyrrell) who’s eager to marry him.

Photo from Westward the Women, with Patience Hawley (Hope Emerson, the tallest woman)—and the rest of the women—looking at their “picture groom” photos, before the combination square dance/ wedding reception.

Westward the Women ends just after the surviving women meet (and marry) the men.
Even rough cowboy Buck Wyatt (Robert Taylor) ends up “getting hitched,” although he never intended to find a wife in Fifi Danon (Denice Darcel).
There’s no bride, however, for Ito Kentaro (Korean War veteran, Henry Nakamura).
The role of an Asian cowboy was played mainly for comic relief.
On the other hand, Zandy’s Bride, begins a little before the wedding between Liv and Zandy, and its’ subject is how the bride and groom get on after they’re wed.

In Westward the Women, the men are grateful to find brave women willing to join them in matrimony, but we never learn how all their stories work out.
In Zandy’s Bride, however, it takes at least a year—and a little distance—for Zandy to recognize the true worth of his mail-order bride. 

According to “Coming to America: The War Brides Act of 1945”—on the National WWII Museum website—over 60,000 foreign women wed American servicemen during WWII.
These women had little time to really get to know their new husbands, but they were determined to join them in the U.S. anyway.
U.S. immigration laws stood in their way.
Congress passed the War Brides Act of 1945, and under this law eventually 300,000 women, plus dependents, were admitted by 1948.

Panel from the “Korean War Bride” tale from All True Romance #11 (1953).

To read the entire story, click HERE.

After the Korean War, more than 6,000 Korean women married American soldiers and immigrated to the U.S.
Besides the difficulties of adjusting to a new and strange culture, these women also faced discrimination, and the ridiculous stereotype that Asian women are docile, weak, and sexually available.

Obtaining an immigrant bride is still a thriving business.
Women greatly outnumber men in countries like Russia, El Salvador, and Guadeloupe, and so women in those lands have been open to becoming mail-order brides.
Some women, from poorer countries, travel to the U.S. to find rich husbands.
(It’s the fodder of reality TV shows like 90-Day Fiancé.)
American men have married foreign women, hoping they’ll make more “traditional” wives than “spoiled” American women.
Did Trump—and his father and grandfather—marry Europeans because they were frightened of American women, or did they believe American women inferior?
(All three generations married European women who needed to become citizens; Donald Trump married two.)

*White Borders, by Reese Jones, Beacon Press, 2021.

“Giving Their All” for America

 

A 1948 Shmoo clock (with store display) from Lux Clock Company.

According to a Harlan Ellison (author, 1934-2018) article, “Shmoo Goes There,” cartoonist Al Capp (1909-1979) had “one great idea”; it wasn’t comic strip “hillbilly” L’il Abner.
Instead, said Ellison, it was the Shmoo.
I disagree. I think both were great ideas.
However, while the L’il Abner cartoon strip ran over 40 years, the Shmoo was a “viral craze” that only lasted from the late 1940’s through the mid-50s.
Besides the comic strip, there were Shmoo toys, clocks, and nesting dolls.

The Shmoo was an animal invented by Al Capp, for his L’il Abner strip.
They were cheerful characters willing to sacrifice anything and everything for humankind.
They laid eggs, and gave milk.
When fried, the Shmoos tasted like chicken; when broiled, they tasted like red meat.
On top of that, Shmoos didn’t begrudge using their ham-shaped bodies to feed humans.
Instead, they were thrilled to be roasted for human pleasure.
Like the tribbles on Star Trek, the Shmoo reproduced asexually at a fantastic rate, and were very affectionate.
Like the newts in novelist Karel Capek’s War with the Newts, Shmoo skin made an excellent leather.

The GPO 1949 savings bond series for children featured the Shmoos. (Click to enlarge.)

In the Dogpatch comic strip, American business people attempted to kill off the Shmoos (because big business couldn’t compete with them).
However, heroic L’il Abner saved a pair, and kept them safe in a secret space.
The Shmoos were so popular that the U.S. issued a colorful premium for purchasing savings bonds for children.
(Al Capp accompanied President Truman at the certificate’s unveiling ceremony.)

Shmoos can be thought of in the same way as America has thought about slaves, indentured servants, and immigrants—as a commodity, to be used by the elite.
On the other hand, when it became apparent that the indigenous peoples wouldn’t “fit” as colonial tenant farmers, America gave the First Americans a choice—assimilation or death.

Mingo (Ed Ames, on left, an actor of Ukrainian descent) was the highly-educated Native American “sidekick” in the TV series Daniel Boone (1964-1970), that starred Fess Parker (right) in the title role.

In Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans, Anthony F.C. Wallace analyses Thomas Jefferson’s “inconsistent” history with indigenous peoples.
While Jefferson appeared to admire Native American character and culture, he engineered Native American genocide by seizing indigenous lands.
(Shockingly, Jefferson was so fascinated by Native American customs than he dug up their burial mounds!)
In 1791:

Rumors flew that. . .the offer to teach the Indians [Native Americans] to raise cattle and tend their fields like white men was merely a ruse to turn Indian men into women (who were the native horticulturists) or “beasts” like oxen and packhorses, to raise corn for the white men.

In the early days of the thirteen colonies, there was a severe labor shortage.
In order to help solve this problem, in 1607, the British Virginia Company set up a system by which Europeans could sell four to seven years of their labor in exchange for passage to the New World.
The British prison system dumped at least 52,000 criminals on our shores, also slated to enter indentured servitude. 

According to “Indentured Servants in the U.S.”—a History Detectives Special Investigation by PBS—one-half to two-thirds of early immigrants arrived as indentured servants.
The mortality rate was high because the agricultural conditions were brutal (plus masters were allowed to beat, and overwork, their servants). Female servants who were raped by their masters (or fellow servants) had their children taken away, and an extra year added to their sentences.
A few former servants eventually bought farms, usually on land vulnerable to indigenous warfare.
All in all, being an indentured servant in America was not a happy life.
Many servants fled, either back to Britain, or deep into the forests.

Although indentured servitude wasn’t officially barred until 1917, the colonial elite grew disenchanted with just using the indentured servant system to solve American labor problems.
(These “ingrates” actually expected some dignity, after they completed their sentences.)
TPTB decided that while the white indentured servants could eventually win back freedom, all the Black indentured servants would become permanent slaves.
The first slave ship that arrived on colonial shores was the White Lion.
It arrived in 1619, before the Mayflower.
(No one honors the descendants of Americans who came over on the White Lion.)

Clarence Lusane’s book, The Black History of the White House, outlines how Blacks built the White House—and built this country—covering the early days of the thirteen colonies, through the start of the Obama administration.
Besides the White House, “enslaved labor built much of early America, especially in the South.”

French poster for Song of the South—based on the Uncle Remus African folk tales (told by former slaves to a white journalist).

It was a patronizing endearment to call older slaves “Uncle” or “Aunt.”

(This 1946 film is no longer available in the U.S., and isn’t included on any Disney DVD/Blu-ray compilations.)

The curious thing about American slavery, was that slave owners actually expected enslaved people to be content with being slaves!
Clarence Lusane’s book tells how distressed George and Martha Washington were when “disloyal” companion and seamstress, Oney Judge (1773-1848), escaped from their family in 1796, and their magnificent chef, Hercules Posey (also known as “Uncle Harkless”), escaped a year later.
The President’s family had no idea why these valuable, well-clothed, slaves would want to abandon them, especially when they were “humane enough” to treat house slaves “as part of the family.”

Prior to the Civil War, “slaves accounted for nearly 60% of all agricultural wealth” in the Southern states.
After the Civil War, the “abolition of slavery eliminated about $2 billion of Southern capital and reduced Southern land value by roughly the same amount.”
(Data from Wealth and Democracy, by Kevin Phillips.)
All in all, the Civil War made the South much poorer, and the North much richer, because the South’s wealth was tied up in using people as property.

Chow Yun-Fat in poster for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Chinese men wore their hair in a long, braided style, from the 1600s through the early 1900s.

To return to China—without their hair in this style—was an act of treason against the Chinese government, punishable by death.

Between 1865-1869, thousands of Chinese migrants—not immigrants—toiled to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
(Most Chinese men wanted to return to China. That’s why they kept their long, braided hairstyles/queues.)
I remember reading about the saying “not a Chinaman’s chance” (meaning “little or no chance”) in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior.
Does the idiom come from so few Chinese workers being able to return to China?
(Many were robbed and murdered, en route.)
Does it come from railroad work being so dangerous, or the 17 Chinese men lynched during the Los Angeles Massacre of 1871?
(For data on the 1871 Massacre, see page 19-21 of White Borders, by Reece Jones.)

Round Trip to America, by Mark Wyman, deals with European migration to the U.S.
(Although there were 20 million arrivals between 1890-1924, the return rate averaged 35%, with some countries averaging 65%.)
This book recounts that during the early 1900s, a high percentage of American industrial jobs were held by recent immigrants.
Carnegie Steel (in Pennsylvania) employed 14,359 laborers, 11,694 of whom were Eastern Europeans.
A Ford auto plant counted 12,880 workers in 1914, and 9,109 were also from Eastern Europe.
A survey of Michigan copper mines (1910) found that 80% of those employed in the mines were born in Finland.
Recent immigrants were very attractive to employers because so few wanted to join unions.
Instead, they “willingly endured lower wages, coarse treatment, and poor conditions.”
(Sadly, many broke labor strikes, when asked.)

While the Pledge of Allegiance clearly says “with liberty and justice for all,” many Americans are just mouthing the words.
(They’ve conveniently forgotten the word “all.”)
As immigrants quickly discovered, Americans may talk a big game about “fairness” and “equality.” However, all some really want is money, and to have other people at their feet.
(Today’s elite doesn’t “hate” the “lower orders”; they just want them to know their place.)

In the last scene of The Best Years of Our Lives, poor white WWII veteran Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) proposes—to Peggy Stephenson (Teresa Wright)—saying “we’ll have to work, get kicked around.”

Although the lobby card made it look like a comedy, this 1946 film dealt with issues like class, and veterans finding work.

Almost 250 years ago, the men of the colonies had their reasons for not wanting to be under the thumb of King George III.
However, not all were desperate for a new government, or not allowing the thirteen colonies to continue as a “cash cow” for Britain.
Some—especially bigwigs owning land in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia—were terrified that the British government would soon end slavery in all its’ colonies,* and then what would happen to colonial wealth? 

Slaves, indentured servants, indigenous peoples, and immigrants (of certain nationalities) have all been expected to know their place, and not consider themselves equal to white, Anglo-Saxon, property-owners.
Indigenous peoples were expected to be passive, as each treaty was broken, and they were left with less and less land.
Americans were taught that Anglo-Saxon people were the “stars” in this country, and everyone else was a “supporting player.”
That’s the myth of America.

*In 1772, the Somerset vs Stewart decision set free 14,000-15,000 Blacks who were residents in Britain. After an American official (Charles Stewart) brought his household to London, his slave (James Somerset) fled Stewart, gained the help of Granville Sharpe (1735-1813), sued for his freedom, and won! (For the full story, read Slave Nation, by Alfred W. Blumrosen and Ruth G. Blumrosen.)