Despite the expectation that these "Mercer Girls" would marry, Ordway remained single and became a successful teacher, school administrator, and suffrage activist.

[1] The suffrage activism of Ordway and some of the other "Mercer Girls" reflected their educational levels, professional status, and the values associated with personal autonomy that promoted their decisions to migrate across the continent to build new lives.

Ordway received a good education for a woman of her time, matriculating at the Ipswich Academy in Massachusetts.

She developed a reputation as the best teacher in the territory, according to author Libbie Hawker,[2] and traveled around the area to turn around problem schools.

[5] Thereafter, Ordway returned to teaching in Kitsap County and, in 1881, became the first woman to be elected as a school superintendent in territorial Washington.