Mercer Girls

Mercer, an American who lived in Seattle, wanted to "import" women to the Pacific Northwest to balance the gender ratio.

[3] Frontier Seattle attracted numerous men to work in the timber and fishing industries, but very few single women were willing to relocate by themselves to the remote Pacific Northwest.

The Mercer Girls of the first voyage were Annie May Adams, Antoinette Josephine Baker, Sarah Cheney, Aurelia Coffin, Sarah Jane Gallagher, Maria Murphy, Elizabeth Ordway, Georgia Pearson, Josephine Pearson, Catherine Stevens, and Katherine Stickney.

However, in the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, his next trip east went wrong, until speculator Ben Holladay promised to provide transport for the women.

However, the New York Herald found out about the project and wrote that all the women were destined to waterfront dives or to be wives of old men.

Among the financiers of the expedition had been Hiram Burnett, a lumber mill manager for Pope & Talbot, who was bringing out his sister and wanted wives for his employees.