The show was fantastic from day one. I really hope that they release the whole series onto DVD someday. The synopsis was based on an acctual incident where some hearty Seattle folk went to New Bedford, Mass. and talked many marriagable young ladies into moving to Seattle to become brides.
This did happen.
The rest was totally made up. But the show was fantastic. Everybody who was invovled with the did a great job. Would be neat to see a reunion film done, of course years later like maybe during the Great Seattle Fire or something. But only if it is a good script and not something quickly thrown together. Bring back all the regulars they can. Robert Brown is a writer now so he can put alot of input into the script!

Again, the show was a very enjoyable experience and I do hope it is released onto DVD and video for all of us to enjoy again.

--Johnny B

I discovered Here Come the Brides when I was 15. I started watching it, actually, because I'd seen Mark Lenard on Star Trek and wanted to see what he was doing. When I found out the show's premise was based on actual historical events, I was hooked. Didn't really have a favorite actor from among all the fantastic guys on the show; or to be more accurate, I had a different favorite every week or so.

I guess my favorite episode would be "Hosanna's Way" because it was about diversity, and learning to accept someone from an ethnic group that you've been taught to think of as "the enemy". Mark Lenard had a great scene in it, too, where Aaron revealed something about his background, and showed some empathy for other people in general, and the Bolts in particular, that we hadn't seen in him up to that point.

I was so taken with Seattle that I was determined to go there, and a few years later I did. Rode almost three days on a bus to get there from Chicago, wangled a job at a museum exhibit on my second day in town, and spent all summer & fall there; best job I ever had in my entire life!

--Sandy

     Besides the episode featuring famed showman P. T. Barnum and his protege Jenny Lind, there's at least one other element in the series that was based on reality. The scheming sawmill owner, Aaron Stempel (Mark Lenard), seems to have been inspired by a real person - sawmill owner Henry Yesler, whose cheap, highly combustible lumber was one of the reasons for the Great Seattle Fire of 1888. As described in the history book "Seattle" by Nard Jones, Yesler was an unrepentant creep (a good deal worse than Stempel, actually) whose response to a lynching in the town square was to tell the newspaper, "It's the only fruit that tree ever bore, but it sure is the sweetest!" Like Stempel, Yesler served on the town council...where one of his main agendas was to fight against the installing of indoor bathrooms! ("Who in hell would want a privy right next to his bedroom?")

     When I read this I was struck by the likelihood of some deliberate borrowing from history on the show. It makes me wonder how many other characters might have had some inspiration in the real world...