Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, 1874
Although the cousins’ situations were all different, they could agree on one point. Sophie, 20; Per, 20; and Lindy, 21, all felt a need to leave Pennsylvania and find new lives. They were very diverse themselves but united in purpose. Sophie was blond, fair-skinned, tall and willowy. She was a fighter, and she could be obstinate. She could also act impetuously. Per, with alabaster skin and ebony hair, looked like a china doll. She was worldly and a cynic, always playing devil’s advocate, while Sophie took a more sanguine view. Lindy, auburn-haired and her Irish father’s daughter with green eyes and a smattering of freckles, was somewhere in the middle, not always optimistic yet not overly pessimistic. She had a sharp mind and she was cautious, the kind of person who came up with great ideas but wanted someone else to try them first.
So it was Lindy who initially broached the subject. Originally, it was just an abstract concept, to somehow find a way out. Sophie was the first one to actually act on the agreement. As she cleaned Uncle Ephraim’s study one day shortly after the cousins made a pact to escape their circumstances, she picked up a copy of The Philadelphia Inquirer and absently browsed through the pages. She was just about to close the newspaper and get back to her cleaning when she spotted the matrimonial ad.
Successful merchant, age 30,
seeks good, innocent, loving
wife. Write to Charles Shanley
c/o the post office in Stonehaven,
Nebraska.
Stonehaven, Nebraska. It sounded like a nice, picturesque place. A nice, far enough away place. And Charles Shanley was a successful merchant. Thirty was not too old, was it? No. Maybe she could have a good life with this man, one where she didn’t feel beholden or like a glorified servant.
Uncle Ephraim and Aunt Portia Armstrong had taken in Sophronia Ann Wheelright seven years prior, when she was 13. Her parents had died of the cholera, and the Armstrongs had never let her forget what a wonderful, charitable act they had performed in taking on her care. Lindy’s parents were raising seven children and could not afford to feed another, and Per and her wealthy, widowed mother were always traveling. It was Uncle Ephraim and Aunt Portia or an orphanage.
Sophie carefully tore out the page with the ad and discarded the newspaper as she always did. Later that afternoon, when her chores were completed, she locked herself in her little attic bedroom and opened her small trunk, which held nearly all her belongings. Her “charitable” aunt and uncle had never seen fit to loan her a bureau or armoire, not that she could have crammed anything of size into the tiny room anyway, and neither would they let her bring many of her belongings when she left her home. So most all her possessions were in the trunk.
She carefully searched through it, and there on the bottom was the writing tablet she had used for her French lessons when she was 13, not long before the disaster struck. Uncle Ephraim and Aunt Portia refused to provide a tutor or send her to school, saying they could not afford it and a girl did not need an education anyway. She knew her parents had left her enough money for that and probably much more. Papa was a banker. They weren’t fabulously wealthy yet lived quite comfortably. Sophie was smart enough to realize that she would probably never see her inheritance since Papa’s sister, Aunt Portia, and her husband had control of it.
What her dear aunt and uncle didn’t know is that Papa, as he lay dying, had directed her to his safe, where she found more than five hundred dollars. He told her to keep it for herself. It was now hidden in a secret compartment in the trunk. Her guardians also did not know that she was self-taught. Most nights after they fell asleep, and any time they were both out, she would make her way to the extensive library and snatch a book or two to take back to her room. In six years, she had read just about every book in the library and now had knowledge on everything from animal husbandry and finance to healing and plumbing. She chuckled at that thought.
“You never know when I might need to breed some prime stock or dig a well,” she had told her cousins.
Sophie plopped down on the bed—her only place to sit in the little room since Uncle Ephraim had removed her small table and chair when she talked back to him—that was the fighter in her—and flipped through the tablet.
“Ah, le français,” she smiled and just as quickly her eyes clouded over as she remembered all she’d lost.
She sighed, looking at the tablet and at her slightly frayed pale gray gown. She brushed some dirt off the skirt and shook her head. She had enough money to buy an entire new wardrobe. That would alert her guardians, however, that she was not destitute, which would never do. Willing herself to get back on task, she studied the paper. Though the tablet wasn’t expensive vellum, it was usable; it would have to do. She rummaged around in the trunk again and came up with a pencil, one she had whittled a point on with her father’s pocket knife. It was the only remembrance she had of him besides the money, one she also kept hidden lest her uncle take it away. If Mr. Shanley thought less of her because she used a pencil and not a quill pen, then he was not the right man for her anyway. That decided, she sat down again on the bed, balancing the tablet on her lap. It took her several starts and stops before she came up with a letter that satisfied her. Would it satisfy him? She wondered. Well, best not to spend time worrying on something over which she had no control.
Dear Mr. Shanley,
I was intrigued by your advertisement in The Philadelphia Inquirer seeking a wife. I am 20 years old, soon to be 21. My parents passed away when I was 13. I have lived since then with an aunt and uncle who have hinted that it is time for me to move on. I agree.
I am a good, honest person and a hard worker. I have never really had a male friend but believe I would make a good mate. I am 5 feet 6 inches tall and thin but healthy, with dark blond hair and blue eyes. I am a decent cook and love children and animals.
If this sounds acceptable to you, please write to me in care of the Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, post office.
Most sincerely,
Sophronia (Sophie) Wheelright
She almost added that she was well educated but did not want to scare him away in case he wasn’t. She hoped he could read between the lines where she noted she had never had a male friend. She just could not make herself write that she was “innocent.” It sounded too personal for a first letter. Or any letter, for that matter. Now to find a time she could get to the post office and mail it. Fortunately, she still had most of the money from Papa’s safe. God knew the Armstrongs would never give her a blessed dime.