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Mrs. once meant wealth and rank
Mistress here meant a woman in charge, someone with wealth and power, and has nothing to do with the other-woman sense of the word. Mr. works the same way: it is a contraction of master, in the sense of a person with wealth and power. The titles marked the people who stood higher up than you.
Under that usage, Taylor Swift would have become Mrs. Taylor Swift the minute she got rich and famous, and she would have stayed Mrs. Taylor Swift for the rest of her life. Marriage would have had nothing to do with it.
Men held the top rung in a historically sexist world, yet a woman of higher social class than a man still ranked above him. Rank was the thing the title announced.
How did Miss and Mrs. split apart?
Miss and Mrs. both come from the same word, mistress. In the 1600s and 1700s, Mrs. could be used for any adult woman of standing, married or not, while Miss was mostly used for girls. Over the 1700s and 1800s the two settled into the pattern used today, with Mrs. for married women and Miss for unmarried ones. Historians of English trace the marital meaning to that later period.
Where does Mr. come from?
Mr. is the written shortening of master, which comes from the Latin magister, meaning a chief or teacher. For centuries it was kept for men of standing, such as gentlemen and officials, while ordinary men were addressed by name or by trade. Its use widened gradually until it applied to nearly every adult man. Master is also the origin of mister, the spoken form of Mr.
Why did Ms. appear?
Ms. was proposed as a title that, like Mr., does not reveal marital status. Suggestions for it appeared in American newspapers as early as 1901. Ms. magazine, which began publishing in the early 1970s, helped bring it into everyday use.
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