author
A. S. (Asa Shinn) Mercer
1839–1917
A frontier educator and booster of the Pacific Northwest, he helped launch the University of Washington and became famous for bringing the "Mercer Girls" to Seattle in the 1860s. His life later stretched into politics, publishing, and the turbulent story of the American West.
1 Audiobook
Powder River invasion : War on the rustlers in 1892
by A. S. (Asa Shinn) Mercer
About the author
Born in Illinois in 1839, Asa Shinn Mercer moved to Seattle as a young man and soon became the first president of the Territorial University of Washington. In the university's earliest days, he did far more than lead on paper: accounts from the University of Washington describe him as teacher, recruiter, and builder during the school's fragile beginning.
Mercer is best remembered for organizing two trips that brought young women from the East Coast to Washington Territory, where many were expected to work as teachers and some later married local settlers. Those arrivals became known as the "Mercer Girls," and the story made him a lasting figure in Seattle history.
His later career was wide-ranging and restless. He served in public office, worked as a newspaper publisher and promoter, and is also linked to accounts of the Johnson County War, showing how fully his life was woven into the ambitions and conflicts of the nineteenth-century West.