Have you ever used a dating app or website? Then you have more in common than you know with lonely homesteaders in eighteenth-century New England. At once heartwarming and heartbreaking, Matrimony, Inc. reveals the unifying thread that weaves its way through not just marriage and relationships over the centuries, but American social history itself: advertising for love. Amazingly, Americaâs first personal ad appeared in the Boston Evening Post as early as 1759. A âperson who flatters himself that he shall not be thought disagreeableâ was in search of a âyoung lady, between the age of eighteen and twenty-three, of a middling stature, brown hair, of good MoralsâŚâ As family-arranged marriages fell out of fashion, "Husband Wanted" or "Seeking Wife" ads were soon to be found in every state in the nation. From the woman in a Wisconsin newspaper who wanted âno brainless dandy or foppish foolâ to the man with a glass eye who placed an ad in the New York Times hoping to meet a woman with a glass eye, the many hundreds of personal ads that author Francesca Beauman has uncovered offer an extraordinary glimpse into the history of our heartsâ desires, as well as a unique insight into American life as the frontier was settled and the cities grew. Personal ads played a surprisingly vital role in the West: couple by couple, shy smile by shy smile, letter by letter from a dusty, exhausted miner in California to a bored, frustrated seamstress in Ohio. Get ready for a new perspective on the making of modern America, a hundred words of typesetterâs blurry black ink at a time.