VALENTINE’S DAY 2010: Singles search for love by creating profiles on dating Web sites or posting ads on Craigslist or connecting to a far-flung network via social media. It sounds so ... futuristic. Except it’s not.

Americans have been writing and reading personals  anonymous love notes, laments of missed connections, offers of marriage  for generations. In the 19th century, as cities experienced enormous population growth, men and women invented new ways to find partners in an increasingly atomized world. Amorous advertisements abounded in newspapers around the country; the ads became so popular that one letter-writing manual even offered model replies.

Victorian critics derided the mostly male advertisers as wicked seducers, but the ads were a favorite among readers, who found them titillating glimpses into the hearts of strangers. Though the ads below, taken from the pages of The New York Herald, are certainly less racy than what readers might find in publications today, they also feel surprisingly familiar, reminding us, perhaps, that we are not so different from our 19th-century counterparts  at least when it comes to looking for love.

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If the young lady wearing the pink dress, spotted fur cape and muff, had light hair, light complexion and blue eyes, who was in company with a lady dressed in black, that I passed about 5 o’clock on Friday evening in South Seventh Street, between First and Second, Williamsburg, L.I., will address a line to Waldo, Williamsburg Post Office, she will make the acquaintance of a fine young man.