Asa Mercer had decided early in 1864…

Asa Mercer had decided early in 1864 to go east to find women willing to relocate to Puget Sound.

Mercer had 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 has support from the governor of Washington Territory, but the government cannot offer any money.

Mercer had 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 had traveled back through the Isthmus of Panama, although in San Francisco locals had tried to convince the girls to stay there instead.

They arrive in Seattle on May 16, 1864, where the community stages a grand welcome on the grounds of the Territorial University.

All but two of the women are married in short order: Susan Josephine (Josie) Pearson, who dies unexpectedly a short time after she arrived, and Mary Elizabeth (Lizzie) Ordway, the oldest of the women, who is thirty-five when she arrives in Seattle with Mercer.

Mercer is subsequently elected to the Territorial Legislature.