began to place ads, more discreet shops and libraries became the preferred intermediaries, as only men frequented coffee houses. Possibly the earliest genuine personal ad in the United States was published on February 23, 1759, on page 3 of the Boston Evening-Post. The Public Ledger in Philadelphia, founded in 1836, was the first newspaper in the United States to feature personal ads regularly. Marriage ads in the Ledger cost twenty-five cents. In 1840, an editorial in the paper claimed that most ads received 25–500 replies on average. From 1866 until the 20th century, the most widely read newspaper in the United States, the New York Herald, printed personal ads on the front page. In France, the magazine Le Chasseur français (The French Hunter) first published matrimonial ads in the 1880s. Many 18th century newspaper readers considered the personal ads to be jokes, hoaxes, or scams. Georgian society enjoyed mocking personal ads in plays such as Isaac Bickerstaffe's Love in the City, W.T. Moncrieff's Wanted: a wife, Sarah Gardner's The Advertisement, George Macfarren's Winning a Husband, and Maria Hunter's Fitzroy. A popular anonymous novel in 1799 was Belinda; or, An Advertisement for a Husband. Newspapers in England reported on successful marriages resulting from personal ads, and printed cautionary tales when an advertiser was made to look foolish or found himself trapped in an unfortunate pairing. American newspapers printed stories ridiculing matrimonial ads and editorials accusing the ads of soliciting nonmarital sex. In the United States, women placing or answering personal ads were met with public disapproval and suspicion. This changed during the Civil War: soldiers and sailors placed personal ads to find correspondents, and for a woman to reply to these ads was considered a patriotic act. Many military men and their correspondents formed romantic relationships. In 1870, entrepreneur Leslie Fraser Duncan established the Matrimonial News in England, offering 40-word ads for six pence. The following year, Duncan opened offices in San Francisco and Kansas City, Missouri. Publishing thousands of personal ads, Matrimonial News served for three decades to "promote marriage and conjugal felicity". Many ads included photographs. The cost to men for a forty-word ad was twenty-five cents; women's ads (also limited to forty words) were free; additional words cost one cent per word for both men and women. Replies to ads were routed through the Matrimonial News offices. By the 1890s, Matrimonial News was printing a large number of