Seven brides for seven brothers

A backwoodsman named Adam Pontipee comes into town to search for a bride. After being laughed at by the owners of the town's feedlot store he goes out in search of a wife. He comes upon the local tavern where he meets Milly. He and Milly agree to marry despite knowing each other for only a few hours. On the journey home Milly talks about how she is excited to be cooking and taking care of only one man, visibly upsetting Adam. On returning to his cabin in the mountains, Milly is surprised to learn that Adam is one of seven brothers living under the same roof. The brothers have been named alphabetically from the Old Testament and in chronological order are: Adam, Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, Ephraim, Frank (short for Frankincense, the Old Testament having no names beginning with F), and Gideon. All of the brothers have red hair and are well over six feet tall, except Gideon, who is younger and shorter than his brothers.

 

Milly teaches Adam's rowdy, ill-behaved younger brothers manners and social mores. She also shows them how to dance. At first, the brothers have a hard time changing from their "mountain man" ways, but eventually each comes to see that the only way he will get a woman of his own is to do things Milly's way. They are able to test their new manners at a barn-raising, where they meet six women they like — Dorcas, Ruth, Martha, Liza, Sarah and Alice — and the women take a fancy to the brothers as well. The women, however, already have suitors from the town, who jealously taunt the brothers into fighting during the barn-raising. At first the brothers try to resist and remember Milly's teaching, but Adam refuses to let himself be pushed around by the rival suitors, and calls his younger brothers cowards for letting them get away with their behavior. The rival suitors finally go too far when they attack Adam, which provokes Gideon into fighting back. A fierce brawl ensues in which the brothers dominate their physically weaker rivals. Although the brothers do not start the fight, they are banished from the town after destroying the barn in the process of fighting.