Mercer Girls

The Mercer Girls or Mercer Maids were an 1860s project of Asa Shinn Mercer, an American who lived in Seattle, who decided to "import" women to the Pacific Northwest to balance the gender ratio. These events formed the basis of the television series Here Come the Brides.

Frontier Seattle attracted numerous men to work in the timber and fishing industries, but very few single women were willing to relocate by themselves to the remote Pacific Northwest. Only one adult out of ten was a woman, and most girls over 15 were already engaged. White men and women of the Salish tribes did not always feel mutually attracted. Prostitutes were also scarce, until the arrival of John Pennell and his brothel from San Francisco.

In 1864, Asa Mercer decided to go east to find women willing to relocate to Puget Sound. Mercer first enlisted prominent local married couples to act as hosts for the women once they arrived to assuage Victorian era moral concerns over the propriety of importing single women to the frontier. Mercer also had support from the governor of Washington Territory, but the government could not offer any money.

Mercer proceeded to travel to Boston and later to the textile town of Lowell and recruited eight young women from Lowell and two from the nearby community of Townsend, willing to move to the other side of the country. They traveled back through the Isthmus of Panama, although in San Francisco locals tried to convince the girls to stay there instead. They arrived in Seattle on May 16, 1864, where the community staged a grand welcome on the grounds of the Territorial University.

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