100 things challenge - 38: Mercer girls
Jan. 5th, 2013 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
birdienlIn the 1860s, many men were attracted to the frontier area in the Washington territory to work in the booming fishery or logging industries. The city of Seattle was build and grew and developed fast. There was just one thing very much missing: women.... Only one out of ten adults in the Washington territory was a woman.
Local businessman and member of one of the founding families of Seattle, Asa Mercer, decided to travel to the Eastern United States to find single women willing to movie to the other side of the country. His first trip was in 1864 and he recruited 10 young women from the Boston area. When the women arrived in Seattle, all but two of them were soon married to local men.
Encouraged by this success, Mercer decided to repeat his undertaking on a larger scale. He asked Seattle single men 300 dollar and had over 300 applications. Unfortunately, Mercer received a lot of bad publicity, leading to him being able to recruit less than a 100 women in the East. Interestingly, in the advertisements recruiting the women on the East Coast, it was mentioned they would be cooks, housemaids or teachers, the word bride was never mentioned. The contracts the women signed before they went onboard Mercer's ship also had a very different content compared to the men's contracts! Also financially, this second trip proved to be problematic. Upon arriving in San Francisco, the captain and crew of the ship transporting the women refused to go any further as they were not being paid. In the end, most of the women arrived in Seattle by lumber schooners. Mercer had to answer questions from the angry Seattle men about his failed performance.
Asa Mercer himself married one of the girls from his second trip; Annie Stephens. Descendants of the so-called 'Mercer girls' still make up a significant portion of the citizens of Seattle.
Page from Harpers Magazine detailing the voyage of the 'Mercer Girls'
Local businessman and member of one of the founding families of Seattle, Asa Mercer, decided to travel to the Eastern United States to find single women willing to movie to the other side of the country. His first trip was in 1864 and he recruited 10 young women from the Boston area. When the women arrived in Seattle, all but two of them were soon married to local men.
Encouraged by this success, Mercer decided to repeat his undertaking on a larger scale. He asked Seattle single men 300 dollar and had over 300 applications. Unfortunately, Mercer received a lot of bad publicity, leading to him being able to recruit less than a 100 women in the East. Interestingly, in the advertisements recruiting the women on the East Coast, it was mentioned they would be cooks, housemaids or teachers, the word bride was never mentioned. The contracts the women signed before they went onboard Mercer's ship also had a very different content compared to the men's contracts! Also financially, this second trip proved to be problematic. Upon arriving in San Francisco, the captain and crew of the ship transporting the women refused to go any further as they were not being paid. In the end, most of the women arrived in Seattle by lumber schooners. Mercer had to answer questions from the angry Seattle men about his failed performance.
Asa Mercer himself married one of the girls from his second trip; Annie Stephens. Descendants of the so-called 'Mercer girls' still make up a significant portion of the citizens of Seattle.
Page from Harpers Magazine detailing the voyage of the 'Mercer Girls'
