Encounters
''surfeit'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜encounter｜ENC｜20260904152658-27-•
While in Springfield to visit her eldest sister, Elizabeth, who had married Ninian W. Edwards—son of the former governor—Mary Todd met eligible bachelors aplenty at the Edwards home, a social center for the city’s elite. Illinois was a promising hunting ground for a woman in search of a husband. A surfeit of unmarried men so longed for mates that a transplanted Kentuckian, John J. Hardin, urged young women from his native state to migrate northward if they wanted to be married. In 1840, Sangamon County had 24 percent more men than women. Catherine Bergen Jones of Springfield recalled that “nearly every young man in town would ask a young lady to take his arm in the evenings and promenade in a long procession down the muddy paths. Girls were in the minority and even those in their early teens were in demand.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
Link to original