I don't know if you've ever read this children's book called Sarah, Plain and Tall. It's about this widower with two children living in the US western frontier in the late 1800's and wanted a new wife. The problem is there were very few women living on the western frontier at the time so he posted a newspaper ad and a woman named Sarah from Maine answered the ad. They wrote letters back and forth a few times before Sarah traveled west to meet the family and agreed to marry. (So "Mail order bride" originally meant you write letters to each other instead of meeting face to face for courtship.) Even though the story is fictional a lot of marriages were made in this manner. The book Hearts West: True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier gave 12 true stories, it even mentioned there was a newspaper in San Francisco called Matrimonial News dedicated to matchmaking, it promoted "honorable matrimonial engagements and true conjugal facilities for men and women". Many people did end up happily married, others found themselves married to dishonest people who misrepresented themselves. This is supposedly the origin of mail order brides according to the book.