Everything about Asa Mercer totally explained
Asa Shinn Mercer (
June 6,
1839 -
August 10,
1917) was the first president of the
Territorial University of Washington and a member of the
Washington State Senate.
He is remembered primarily for his role in three milestones of the old American West: the founding of the
University of Washington, the
Mercer Girls, and the
Johnson County War.
Mercer Island in
Lake Washington and Mercer Street in
Seattle are named not for Asa, but rather his brother Thomas.
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The University of Washington
In 1861, as a member of one of the founding families in
Seattle, Washington, a young Asa Mercer assisted his brothers in clearing stumps to make way for the new territorial university. Once the building had been completed, Mercer, the only college graduate in town, was hired as the university's sole instructor and president.
The Mercer Girls
The young town of Seattle was attracting hordes of men to work in the timber and fishing industries, but few marriageable women were willing to make the trip to the remote Northwest corner of the United States. In 1864, with public support and private funding, Mercer traveled to the Eastern United States in search of single women to work in Seattle as teachers and in other respectable occupations. This trip, and a subsequent trip in 1866, introduced dozens of women to the Pacific Northwest, most of whom eventually married local men. The descendants of the Mercer Girls still represent a significant portion of Seattle's citizenry. The Mercer Girls story formed the basis of the television show
Here Come the Brides.
The Johnson County War
Mercer became well-known throughout the West as a publisher, and eventually found his way to
Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he published the
Northwestern Livestock Journal, a public relations vehicle for the moneyed cattle interests. As Mercer came to see the clearly underhanded treatment of individual ranchers by the cartels, he began to write more scathing accounts of the events that were unfolding on the open range. His account is told in his book
The Banditti of the Plains, which was suppressed in its day, and is still difficult to find in public libraries in some parts of the
Western U.S.
Following the events of the Johnson County War, which included destruction of his newspaper office by arson, Mercer settled in to the quiet life of a successful rancher in
Buffalo, Wyoming, where he died in 1917.
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