Here Come the Mercer Brides!

 

Sometimes I wonder how much money I spent during my youth on magazines such as Tiger Beat and 16 Magazine.  It was the one way I could obtain all the pin-ups I wanted of my “favs” such as the Osmonds, David Cassidy, The Bay City Rollers and Rick Springfield.  

I actually made the switch from buying Matchbox cars with my allowance money to buying teen magazines a little early…..I was six. 

 Yes, that’s a little early to be reading a magazine written for giggly teenage girls, but then again…..I did have an older sister, and I wanted to do everything that she did. 

The other reason I began to buy the teen rags had to do with a special young man…..Bobby Sherman.

Oh….be still my heart.  

On September 25, 1968 Bobby Sherman entered my life and nothing was ever the same.  I’m sure he would tell you the same thing.    It was a telepathic “thing”, but he and I were going to be together forever.

Of court that date in 1968 coincides with the premiere date of the popular television show Here Come the Brides when it aired for the first time.   

All good things must come to an end though….and Bobby and I were no different.   Our relationship cooled quite a bit after the show was cancelled in 1970.  I went on to third grade and Bobby continued with guest appearances on a long list of television shows and a stab at a musical career.

During the Here Come the Brides stint Bobby Sherman played the adorable and stuttering Jeremy Bolt who along with his older brothers traveled from Seattle to Massachusetts in the 1860s to recruit brides for the lonely employees at their logging mill.

While many of the details regarding the television show was a complete Hollywood fabrication the premise of the show – lonely men in the Pacific Northwest needing brides – is based on a true story.

Asa Shinn Mercer

In 1864, Asa Shinn Mercer was the sole instructor and president of the Territorial University of Washington.  He was chosen primarily because he was the only college graduate for miles.

According to the Mercer Girls website  it was Asa’s idea, at a time when men out numbered women nine to one, to go east to seek ladies of quality and refinement to help balance the male/female ratio of the region.

Mercer devised a plan to head east to convince women to move to Seattle. 

Even now in the very lenient, very free 21^st century Mercer’s idea sounds a little harebrained – even scandalous to some.

Why on earth would a woman from a city like Boston or Lowell, Massachusetts want to travel across the country to Seattle – a rustic outpost where men were men and roughing it was the norm?

We could argue the women simply wanted to satisfy a sense of adventure, but refer back to the paragraph above where I introduce the name….Asa Shinn Mercer. 

What year was it?

1864.

What was going on?

Yes, you are correct – it was the last year of the Civil War. Many of the eligible men were gone and many women felt they had a life of spinsterhood ahead of them at a time when a woman’s identity was strongly evidenced through her husband and his name.  

During Mercer’s first trip back east he managed to convince ten women to return to Seattle with him.  All but two managed to marry fairly quickly once they reached Seattle.

The second trip was more problematic.   By this time Mercer’s plans had reached a wider audience with newspapers such as the New York Herald.   The paper reported the women would find themselves in brothels or married off to old men once they reached Seattle.  Mercer’s 500 prospects for the second trip quickly dwindled to 100.

However, that group of women is very important.  Today, long time inhabitants of Seattle can trace their family lines back to those very women who took a chance and helped settle the Pacific Northwest.

Please visit the Mercer Girls website where Peri Lane Muhich provides more in depth stories of these women.

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elswah max: Ptolemaic dynasty

elswah max: Ptolemaic dynasty: In 332 BC Alexander III of Macedon conquered Egypt with little resistance from the Persians. He was welcomed by the Egyptians as a deliver...

Ptolemaic dynasty

In 332 BC Alexander III of Macedon conquered Egypt with little resistance from the Persians. He was welcomed by the Egyptians as a deliverer. He visited Memphis, and went on a pilgrimage to the oracle of Amun at the Oasis of Siwa. The oracle declared him to be the son of Amun. He conciliated the Egyptians by the respect which he showed for their religion, but he appointed Greeks to virtually all the senior posts in the country, and founded a new Greek city, Alexandria, to be the new capital. The wealth of Egypt could now be harnessed for Alexander's conquest of the rest of the Persian Empire. Early in 331 BC he was ready to depart, and led his forces away to Phoenicia. He left Cleomenes as the ruling nomarch to control Egypt in his absence. Alexander never returned to Egypt.
Following Alexander's death in Babylon in 323 BC, a succession crisis erupted among his generals. Initially, Perdiccas ruled the empire as regent for Alexander's half-brother Arrhidaeus, who became Philip III of Macedon, and then as regent for both Philip III and Alexander's infant son Alexander IV of Macedon, who had not been born at the time of his father's death. Perdiccas appointed Ptolemy, one of Alexander's closest companions, to be satrap of Egypt. Ptolemy ruled Egypt from 323 BC, nominally in the name of the joint kings Philip III and Alexander IV. However, as Alexander the Great's empire disintegrated, Ptolemy soon established himself as ruler in his own right. Ptolemy successfully defended Egypt against an invasion by Perdiccas in 321 BC, and consolidated his position in Egypt and the surrounding areas during the Wars of the Diadochi (322 BC-301 BC). In 305 BC, Ptolemy took the title of King. As Ptolemy I Soter ("Saviour"), he founded the Ptolemaic dynasty that was to rule Egypt for nearly 300 years.
The later Ptolemies took on Egyptian traditions by marrying their siblings, had themselves portrayed on public monuments in Egyptian style and dress, and participated in Egyptian religious life.^[27][28] Hellenistic culture thrived in Egypt well after the Muslim conquest. The Ptolemies had to fight native rebellions and were involved in foreign and civil wars that led to the decline of the kingdom and its annexation by Rome.

New Kingdom

Possibly as a result of the foreign rule of the Hyksos during the Second Intermediate Period, the New Kingdom saw Egypt attempt to create a buffer between the Levant and Egypt, and attain its greatest territorial extent. It expanded far south into Nubia and held wide territories in the Near East. Egyptian armies fought Hittite armies for control of modern-day Syria.

[edit] Eighteenth Dynasty

Golden mask from the mummy of Tutankhamen

This was a time of great wealth and power for Egypt. Some of the most important and best-known Pharaohs ruled at this time. Hatshepsut was a pharaoh at this time. Hatshepsut is unusual as she was a female pharaoh, a rare occurrence in Egyptian history. She was an ambitious and competent leader, extending Egyptian trade south into present-day Somalia and north into the Mediterranean. She ruled for twenty years through a combination of widespread propaganda and deft political skill. Her co-regent and successor Thutmose III ("the Napoleon of Egypt") expanded Egypt's army and wielded it with great success. Late in his reign he ordered her name hacked out from her monuments. He fought against Asiatic people and was the most successful of Egyptian pharaohs. Amenhotep III built extensively at the temple of Karnak including the Luxor temple which consisted of two pylons, a colonnade behind the new temple entrance, and a new temple to the goddess Ma'at.

[Nineteenth Dynasty

Egypt and its world in 1300 BC.

Colossal depictions of Ramesses II at a temple dedicated to him at Abu Simbel.

Ramesses I reigned for two years and was succeeded by his son Seti I. Seti I carried on the work of Horemheb in restoring power, control, and respect to Egypt. He also was responsible for creating the temple complex at Abydos.
Arguably Ancient Egypt's power as a nation-state peaked during the reign of Ramesses II ("the Great") of the 19th Dynasty. He reigned for 67 years from the age of 18 and carried on his immediate predecessor's work and created many more splendid temples, such as that of Abu Simbel on the Nubian border. He sought to recover territories in the Levant that had been held by 18th Dynasty Egypt. His campaigns of reconquest culminated in the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC, where he led Egyptian armies against those of the Hittite king Muwatalli II and was caught in history's first recorded military ambush. Ramesses II was famed for the huge number of children he sired by his various wives and concubines; the tomb he built for his sons (many of whom he outlived) in the Valley of the Kings has proven to be the largest funerary complex in Egypt.
His immediate successors continued the military campaigns, though an increasingly troubled court complicated matters. Ramesses II was succeeded by his son Merneptah and then by Merenptah's son Seti II. Seti II's throne seems to have been disputed by his half-brother Amenmesse, who may have temporarily ruled from Thebes. Upon his death, Seti II son Siptah, who may have been afflicted with polio during his life, was appointed to the throne by Chancellor Bay, an Asiatic commoner who served as vizier behind the scenes. At Siptah's early death, the throne was assumed by Twosret, the dowager queen of Seti II (and possibly Amenmesse's sister). A period of anarchy at the end of Twosret's short reign saw a native reaction to foreign control leading to the execution of the chancellor, and placing Setnakhte on the throne, establishing the Twentieth Dynasty.

[eTwentieth DynastyThe last "great" pharaoh from the New Kingdom is widely regarded to be Ramesses III, the son of Setnakhte who reigned three decades after the time of Ramesses II. In Year 8 of his reign, the Sea People, invaded Egypt by land and sea. Ramesses III defeated them in two great land and sea battles. He claimed that he incorporated them as subject people and settled them in Southern Canaan, although there is evidence that they forced their way into Canaan. Their presence in Canaan may have contributed to the formation of new states in this region such as Philistia after the collapse of the Egyptian Empire. He was also compelled to fight invading Libyan tribesmen in two major campaigns in Egypt's Western Delta in his Year 6 and Year 11 respectively.^[18]

The heavy cost of these battles slowly exhausted Egypt's treasury and contributed to the gradual decline of the Egyptian Empire in Asia. The severity of these difficulties is stressed by the fact that the first known labor strike in recorded history occurred during Year 29 of Ramesses III's reign, when the food rations for the Egypt's favoured and elite royal tomb-builders and artisans in the village of Deir el Medina could not be provisioned.^[19] Something in the air prevented much sunlight from reaching the ground and also arrested global tree growth for almost two full decades until 1140 BC.^[20] One proposed cause is the Hekla 3 eruption of the Hekla volcano in Iceland, but the dating of that event remains in dispute.
Following Ramesses III's death there was endless bickering between his heirs. Three of his sons would go on to assume power as Ramesses IV, Ramesses VI and Ramesses VIII respectively. However, at this time Egypt was also increasingly beset by a series of droughts, below-normal flooding levels of the Nile, famine, civil unrest and official corruption. The power of the last pharaoh, Ramesses XI, grew so weak that in the south the High Priests of Amun at Thebes became the effective defacto rulers of Upper Egypt, while Smendes controlled Lower Egypt even before Ramesses XI's death. Smendes would eventually found the Twenty-First dynasty at Tanis.

Middle Kingdom

An Osiride statue of Mentuhotep II, the founder of the Middle Kingdom

The Middle Kingdom is the period in the history of ancient Egypt stretching from the establishment of the Eleventh Dynasty to the end of the Fourteenth Dynasty, roughly between 2030 BC and 1640 BC.
The period comprises two phases, the 11th Dynasty, which ruled from Thebes and the 12th Dynasty onwards which was centered around el-Lisht. These two dynasties were originally considered to be the full extent of this unified kingdom, but historians now^[15] consider the 13th Dynasty to at least partially belong to the Middle Kingdom.
The earliest pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom traced their origin to a nomarch of Thebes, "Intef the Great, son of Iku", who is mentioned in a number of contemporary inscriptions. However, his immediate successor Mentuhotep II is considered the first pharaoh of this dynasty.
An inscription carved during the reign of Wahankh Intef II shows that he was the first of this dynasty to claim to rule over the whole of Egypt, a claim which brought the Thebeans into conflict with the rulers of Herakleopolis Magna, the Tenth Dynasty. Intef undertook several campaigns northwards, and captured the important nome of Abydos.
Warfare continued intermittently between the Thebean and Heracleapolitan dynasties until the 14th regnal year of Nebhetepra Mentuhotep II, when the Herakleopolitans were defeated, and the Theban dynasty began to consolidate their rule. Mentuhotep II is known to have commanded military campaigns south into Nubia, which had gained its independence during the First Intermediate Period. There is also evidence for military actions against Palestine. The king reorganized the country and placed a vizier at the head of civil administration for the country.
Mentuhotep IV was the final pharaoh of this dynasty, and despite being absent from various lists of pharaohs, his reign is attested from a few inscriptions in Wadi Hammamat that record expeditions to the Red Sea coast and to quarry stone for the royal monuments. The leader of this expedition was his vizier Amenemhat, who is widely assumed to be the future pharaoh Amenemhet I, the first king of the 12th Dynasty. Amenemhet is widely assumed by some Egyptologists to have either usurped the throne or assumed power after Mentuhotep IV died childless.
Amenemhat I built a new capital for Egypt, known as Itjtawy, thought to be located near the present-day el-Lisht, although the chronicler Manetho claims the capital remained at Thebes. Amenemhat forcibly pacified internal unrest, curtailed the rights of the nomarchs, and is known to have at launched at least one campaign into Nubia. His son Senusret I continued the policy of his father to recapture Nubia and other territories lost during the First Intermediate Period. The Libyans were subdued under his forty-five year reign and Egypt's prosperity and security were secured.
Senusret III (1878 BC – 1839 BC) was a warrior-king, leading his troops deep into Nubia, and built a series of massive forts throughout the country to establish Egypt's formal boundaries with the unconquered areas of its territory. Amenemhet III (1860 BC – 1815 BC) is considered the last great pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom.
Egypt's population began to exceed food production levels during the reign of Amenemhat III, who then ordered the exploitation of the Fayyum and increased mining operations in the Sinaï desert. He also invited Asiatic settlers to Egypt to labor on Egypt's monuments. Late in his reign the annual floods along the Nile began to fail, further straining the resources of the government. The Thirteenth Dynasty and Fourteenth Dynasty witnessed the slow decline of Egypt into the Second Intermediate Period in which some of the Asiatic settlers of Amenemhat III would grasp power over Egypt as the Hyksos.

Dynastic Egypt

The historical records of ancient Egypt begin with Egypt as a unified state, which occurred sometime around 3150 BC. According to Egyptian tradition Menes, thought to have unified Upper and Lower Egypt, was the first king. This Egyptian culture, customs, art expression, architecture, and social structure was closely tied to religion, remarkably stable, and changed little over a period of nearly 3000 years.
Egyptian chronology, which involves regnal years, began around this time. The conventional Egyptian chronology is the chronology accepted during the twentieth century, but it does not include any of the major revision proposals that also have been made in that time. Even within a single work, archaeologists often will offer several possible dates or even several whole chronologies as possibilities. Consequently, there may be discrepancies between dates shown here and in articles on particular rulers or topics related to ancient Egypt. There also are several possible spellings of the names. Typically, Egyptologists divide the history of pharaonic civilization using a schedule laid out first by Manetho's Aegyptiaca (History of Egypt) that was written during the Ptolemaic era, during the third century BC.
Prior to the unification of Egypt, the land was settled with autonomous villages. With the early dynasties, and for much of Egypt's history thereafter, the country came to be known as the Two Lands. The rulers established a national administration and appointed royal governors.
According to Manetho, the first king was Menes, but archeological findings support the view that the first pharaoh to claim to have united the two lands was Narmer (the final king of the Protodynastic Period). His name is known primarily from the famous Narmer Palette, whose scenes have been interpreted as the act of uniting Upper and Lower Egypt.
Funeral practices for the elite resulted in the construction of mastaba tombs, which later became models for subsequent Old Kingdom constructions such as the Step pyramid.

Main article: Old Kingdom

Graywacke statue of the pharaoh Menkaura and his consort Queen Khamerernebty II. Originally from his Giza Valley temple, now on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The Old Kingdom is most commonly regarded as spanning the period of time when Egypt was ruled by the Third Dynasty through to the Sixth Dynasty (2686 BC – 2134 BC). The royal capital of Egypt during the Old Kingdom was located at Memphis, where Djoser established his court. The Old Kingdom is perhaps best known, however, for the large number of pyramids, which were constructed at this time as pharaonic burial places. For this reason, the Old Kingdom is frequently referred to as "the Age of the Pyramids." The first notable pharaoh of the Old Kingdom was Djoser (2630–2611 BC) of the Third Dynasty, who ordered the construction of a pyramid (the Step Pyramid) in Memphis' necropolis, Saqqara.
It was in this era that formerly independent ancient Egyptian states became known as nomes, ruled solely by the pharaoh. Subsequently the former rulers were forced to assume the role of governors or otherwise work in tax collection. Egyptians in this era worshiped their pharaoh as a god, believing that he ensured the annual flooding of the Nile that was necessary for their crops.
The Old Kingdom and its royal power reached their zenith under the Fourth Dynasty. Sneferu, the dynasty's founder, is believed to have commissioned at least three pyramids; while his son and successor Khufu erected the Great Pyramid of Giza, Sneferu had more stone and brick moved than any other pharaoh. Khufu (Greek Cheops), his son Khafra (Greek Chephren), and his grandson Menkaura (Greek Mycerinus), all achieved lasting fame in the construction of their pyramids. To organize and feed the manpower needed to create these pyramids required a centralized government with extensive powers, and Egyptologists believe the Old Kingdom at this time demonstrated this level of sophistication. Recent excavations near the pyramids led by Mark Lehner have uncovered a large city which seems to have housed, fed and supplied the pyramid workers. Although it was once believed that slaves built these monuments, a theory based on the biblical Exodus story, study of the tombs of the workmen, who oversaw construction on the pyramids, has shown they were built by a corvée of peasants drawn from across Egypt. They apparently worked while the annual Nile flood covered their fields, as well as a very large crew of specialists, including stone cutters, painters, mathematicians and priests.
The Fifth Dynasty began with Userkhaf (2465–2458 BC), who initiated reforms that weakened the central government. After his reign civil wars arose as the powerful nomarchs (regional governors) no longer belonged to the royal family. The worsening civil conflict undermined unity and energetic government and also caused famines. The final blow came when a severe drought in the region that resulted in a drastic drop in precipitation between 2200 and 2150 BC, which in turn prevented the normal flooding of the Nile.^[14] The result was the collapse of the Old Kingdom followed by decades of famine and strife.

History of ancient Egypt

The history of Ancient Egypt spans the period from the early predynastic settlements of the northern Nile Valley to the Roman conquest in 30 BC. The Pharaonic Period is dated from around 3200 BC, when

Lower and Upper Egypt became a unified state, until the country fell under Greek rule in 332 BC.
The Nile Valley of Egypt was basically uninhabitable until the work of clearing and irrigating the land along the banks of the river was started.^[1] However it appears that this clearance and irrigation was largely under way by about 6000 BC. By that time, society in the Nile Valley was already engaged in organized agriculture and the construction of large buildings in the Nile Valley.^[2] At this time, Egyptians in the southwestern corner of Egypt were herding cattle and also constructing large buildings. Mortar was in use by 4000 BC. The people of the Nile Valley and on delta were self-sufficient and were raising barley and emmer (an early variety of wheat) and stored it in pits lined with reed mats.^[3] They raised cattle, goats and pigs and they wove linens and baskets.^[4] The Predynastic Period continues through this time, variously held to begin with the Naqada culture.
Between 5500 and 3100 BC, during Egypt's Predynastic Period, small settlements flourished along the Nile, whose delta empties into the Mediterranean Sea. By 3300 BC, just before the first Egyptian dynasty, Egypt was divided into two kingdoms, known as Upper Egypt, Ta Shemau, to the south, and Lower Egypt, Ta Mehu, to the north.^[5] The dividing line was drawn roughly in the area of modern Cairo.
The Tasian culture was the next to appear in Upper Egypt. This group is named for the burials found at Der Tasa, a site on the east bank of the Nile between Asyut and Akhmim. The Tasian culture group is notable for producing the earliest blacktop-ware, a type of red and brown pottery which has been painted black on its top and interior.^[6]
The Badarian Culture, named for the Badari site near Der Tasa, followed the Tasian culture, however similarities between the two have led many to avoid differentiating between them at all. The Badarian Culture continued to produce the kind of pottery called Blacktop-ware (although its quality was much improved over previous specimens), and was assigned the Sequence Dating numbers between 21 and 29.^[7] The significant difference, however, between the Tasian and Badarian culture groups which prevents scholars from completely merging the two together is that Badarian sites use copper in addition to stone, and thus are chalcolithic settlements, while the Tasian sites are still Neolithic, and are considered technically part of the Stone Age.^[7]
The Amratian culture is named after the site of el-Amra, about 120 km south of Badari. El-Amra was the first site where this culture group was found unmingled with the later Gerzean culture group; however, this period is better attested at the Naqada site, thus it is also referred to as the Naqada I culture.^[8] Black-topped ware continued to be produced, but white cross-line ware, a type of pottery which was decorated with close parallel white lines crossed by another set of close parallel white lines, began to be produced during this time. The Amratian period falls between S.D. 30 and 39 in Petrie's Sequence Dating system.^[9] Trade between Upper and Lower Egypt was attested at this time, as newly excavated objects indicate. A stone vase from the north was found at el-Amra, and copper, which is not present in Egypt, was apparently imported from the Sinai, or perhaps from Nubia. Obsidian^[10] and an extremely small amount of gold^[9] were both definitively imported from Nubia during this time. Trade with the oases was also likely.^[10]
The Gerzean Culture, named after the site of Gerza, was the next stage in Egyptian cultural development, and it was during this time that the foundation for Dynastic Egypt was laid. Gerzean culture was largely an unbroken development out of Amratian Culture, starting in the delta and moving south through upper Egypt; however, it failed to dislodge Amratian Culture in Nubia.^[11] Gerzean culture coincided with a significant drop in rainfall,^[11] and farming produced the vast majority of food.^[11] With increased food supplies, the populace adopted a much more sedentary lifestyle, and the larger settlements grew to cities of about 5,000 residents.^[11] It was in this time that the city dwellers started using mud brick to build their cities.^[11] Copper instead of stone was increasingly used to make tools^[11] and weaponry.^[12] Silver, gold, lapis, and faience were used ornamentally,^[13] and the grinding palettes used for eye-paint since the Badarian period began to be adorned with relief carvings

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