That done, he headed east to Lowell, Massachusetts. He was able to recruit eleven women and one father to take him up on his offer. They returned to Seattle, and most everyone got married and Daniel Pearson (the father) made enough money to pay for the rest of his family to join him.
When you stumble across a good idea, you tend to try to repeat your success. Which Asa tried to do on a very grand scale. He hoped to bring over 1000 marriageable ladies on his second trip, and while things happened to prevent him from achieving that goal, he did succeed in bringing many more women over, leaving New York City Harbor on January 16, 1866. Among this second group of women, Asa Mercer found love and married.
Read more about Asa Mercer. Click here to see if he looks like Jason Bolt to you.
Asa's first recruitment trip did not make headline news in Lowell. Read what the local Lowell papers reported during Asa Mercer's first recruitment project.
The second expedition was followed as a curiosity through the New York Times. The first major article was on September 30th, 1865 on Page 8.
The most comprehensive information on the first group of Mercer maids is available on the web at Peri's Mercer Girl's Website. Read more about one of the first maidens, Lizzie Ordway and her very important role in the Seattle Public Schools.
Books
Mercer's Belles: The Journal of a Reporter by Roger Conant and Lenna A. Deutsch, ed. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1960. "This often hilarious, always entertaining account is the shipboard diary of Roger Conant, a New York Times reporter who accompanied Asa Mercer and the famous Mercer Girls on their three month voyage from New York through the Straight of Magellan to Seattle in 1866.
Periodicals
The Women's Day, December-1948 had a nice overview of the second expedition, complete with copies of the illustrations from the Harper's Weekly article
Historical Fiction
Cargo of Brides by Helen Rucker, Popular Library, June 1977 (originally 1956) ISBN 0-445-08608-4The girls were hand-picked from the best homes on the Easten seaboard. Each was beautiful, intelligent, willing and pure—or so they said.
They were leaving cities bereft of men after the Civil War, traveling to the only place on earth with a shortage of women. Each planned to find the husband of her dreams...
On a wild Western frontier, more than a thousand men anxiously awaited their cargo of brides. They were strong, outdoorsment who worked with their hands and fought Indians...men who hadn't touched a female in years...men who really weren't much worried about getting married--but let them at those women... (based upon Asa Mercer's second, less successful expedition).
Seattle Green by Jane Adams, Arbor House, 1987, ISBN 1-877961-19-1
When the steamer Continental sails into Puget Sound in the spring of 1866, fifteen-year-old Maddy Douglas is on board, a nervous mail-order bride destined to give her hand to one Blanchard brother an her heart to another. But with her blazing Yankee obsession for the raw, rich land of the Northwest, she soon begins to car an empire form the very heart of the Washington wilderness; a multi-generational story.
They were leaving cities bereft of men after the Civil War, traveling to the only place on earth with a shortage of women. Each planned to find the husband of her dreams...
On a wild Western frontier, more than a thousand men anxiously awaited their cargo of brides. They were strong, outdoorsment who worked with their hands and fought Indians...men who hadn't touched a female in years...men who really weren't much worried about getting married--but let them at those women... (based upon Asa Mercer's second, less successful expedition).
Movies
Westward the Women MGM/UA Home Video, 1951, ISBN 0-7928-2403-2(very loosely related)
They are rugged pioneers, Indian fighters and brave trailblazers who tame the wild west. These are the women of the great frontier—that's right—the women! Based on historical record, this wagon train saga details a 2000 mile journey from Chicago to California. The men seek gold; the women seek men. Both strike pay dirt! Buck Wyatt (Robert Taylor) is a tough, experienced scout who leads a wagon train comprised of two ex-show girls (Denise Darcel and Julie Bishop), a hearty widow from New Bedford (Beverly Dennis) and fififteen men who act as guards....these tough ladies are filled witht eh American frontier spirit and nothing will stop them!
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