Mail Order Annie
Copyright© 2025 by DFL Runner
Chapter 1
Fargo, Dakota Territory
March 1873
The young lady gave Harry Crane a flirtatious look as she followed her father out of the general store. He smiled back at her, but it was a polite façade. She wasn’t quite his type. Besides, despite being the railway foreman’s daughter, she had a bit of a reputation among the local single men. The married ones, too. However, the position and power her father held tended to prevent the rumors from becoming more than, ostensibly, rumors falsely propagated by the young single women who had been unable to find a husband despite women being in short supply in the fledgling town.
After they left, Harry locked the door to give him time to have something to eat and go to the postal station near the train depot to mail a letter to his sister, Deborah.
Deborah had reached out to him last summer with news that their mother had passed away. He learned that, like him, Deborah’s relationship with her mother had been distant for several years as their mother poured herself into her second marriage, the two children who resulted from that marriage, and, of course, the money that her husband earned as a factory foreman.
By the time the letter reached him, his mother had long since been buried. Still, the letter sparked regular correspondence between the two of them, in which she told him of his two nephews and his niece. Benjamin, the eldest, had just come of working age and had recently been offered an apprenticeship by a blacksmith. Peter, at ten years old, was remarkably bright and loved to write. He spent much of his leisure time shadowing Mr. Seeger, the editor of the local newspaper, sometimes setting up the printing press for that day’s run. And his niece, Catherine, who was born just a few days after Harry and Ella were wed, was about to begin her schooling.
In turn, Harry shared some of his own history. Deborah had known about Ella and Joshua, of course, but he also shared his memories of Martin Tanner. He was surprised by her apparent acceptance of Martin’s secret history until she mentioned that her husband’s cousin had a “very close” relationship with a lady she met while working as a seamstress.
Harry arrived at the postal station to mail his latest letter to Deborah. As he handed the letter over to the attendant behind the counter, the young man startled him. “Oh! Mr. Crane! I have a letter here for you.”
Harry glanced at the envelope, and his eyes widened. It had been sent from Pennsylvania by one A. Halsey. Was this possibly a response to the solicitation he had almost impulsively placed in the Woman’s Journal magazine nearly three months prior?
Hastening back to the store, Harry sat behind the counter and opened the letter. A detached portion of his consciousness noted that his hands were trembling as if he were again 17 years old and assessing the fit of Ella’s dress.
Dear Mr. Crane:
I should like to submit myself for consideration as the woman you seek in your published notice.
My name is Anna Grace Halsey, although I prefer to be called Annie. I am twenty-one years of age and was hired as a teacher for the children of Scranton, Pennsylvania a bit more than two years ago.
“Annie.” He softly spoke the name aloud, turning it over on his tongue a few times.
“And you’re a teacher,” Harry murmured to himself as he read. He thought of something Martin had once said of Harry’s own schoolteacher, a man with little patience who kept the paddle close at hand for any student, boy or girl, who offended his sensibilities. Martin had said that many teachers ... both the secular teachers in schoolhouses and the religious teachers in church houses ... seemed to be possessed of much knowledge, yet surprisingly little wisdom.
But ... surely one so young and held in such high esteem as a schoolteacher wouldn’t be reaching out to him?
He read on.
I came upon your notice quite by accident, although I am not certain that anything in my life has been “accidental” over these past few months. Nevertheless, your words strike a chord in me, not only for their civility – a distressingly rare quality among men who write and place such advertisements, in my assessment – but also for their humanity.
The words resonated with Harry. While it would never occur to him to be anything other than a gentleman, he had read several other such notices while seeking inspiration for his own. He felt revulsion as a man reading them, never mind as a woman being presented with them. His recently-deceased father-in-law would have been apoplectic at the notion of such men seeking the favor of his daughters. Although Kenneth Burke was very much a traditionalist, any man who approached him with a thought of treating his beloved girls like chattel would have found himself ejected from the house on the toe of Kenneth’s boot. Further, Martin Tanner would have disowned Harry for engaging a member of the fairer sex with such an attitude. He continued reading.
I am trained as a teacher but was turned out from the classroom several months ago because I taught a lesson that suggested women – who are, after all, deemed equally as essential as men to maintaining the social order of a polite society – ought to receive the same rights as men enjoy. I am pleased to see that your attitudes on this subject seem to align with my own.
Please allow me to speak plainly. I realize that men who offer an opportunity such as this may wish to make inquiries about the women who respond. I will therefore save you unnecessary expense and me unnecessary embarrassment. Since my dismissal from the classroom, I have resided in a boarding house where I was engaged to instruct the young women there in reading and arithmetic. Nonetheless, I admit that, at times, circumstances compelled me to contribute to the house in less reputable ways.
“Oh my goodness!” Harry gasped.
The customer in the store, startled, asked, “Harry? What’s wrong?”