Part 30 (2/2)

The family moved to Princeton, Ill., in 1834, a period when buffalo were still occasionally found east of the Mississippi river, and savage Indians annoyed and hara.s.sed outlying settlements in that region. A remarkable coincidence is a matter of family tradition. Nancy Brigham, who later became Mr. Mercer's wife, and her family, were compelled to flee by night from their home near Dixon at the time of the Black Hawk war, and narrowly escaped ma.s.sacre. In 1856, about twenty years later, her daughters, the youngest only eight years old, also made a midnight escape in Seattle, two thousand miles away from the scene of their mother's adventure, and they endured the terrors of the attack upon the village a few days later when the shots and shouts of the thousand painted devils rang out in the forest on the hillside from a point near the present gas works to another near where Madison street ends at First Avenue.

CROSSING THE PLAINS.

In April, 1852, a train of about twenty wagons, drawn by horses, was organized at Princeton to cross the plains to Oregon. In this train were Thomas Mercer, Aaron Mercer, Dexter Horton, Daniel Bagley, William H.

Shoudy, and their families. Some of these still live in or near Seattle and others settled in Oregon. Mr. Mercer was chosen captain of the train and discharged the arduous duties of that position fearlessly and successfully. Danger and disease were on both sides of the long, dreary way, and hundreds of new made graves were often counted along the roadside in a day. But this train seemed to bear a charmed existence.

Not a member of the original party died on the way, although many were seriously ill. Only one animal was lost.

As the journey was fairly at an end and western civilization had been reached at The Dalles, Oregon, Mrs. Mercer was taken ill, but managed to keep up until the Cascades were reached. There she grew rapidly worse and soon died. Several members of the expedition went to Salem and wintered there, and in the early spring of 1853 Mercer and Dexter Horton came to Seattle and decided to make it their home. Mr. Horton entered immediately upon a business career, the success of which is known in California, Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton, and Mr. Mercer settled upon a donation claim whose eastern end was the meander line of Lake Union and the western end, half way across to the bay. Mercer street is the dividing line between his and D. T. Denny's claims, and all of these tracts were included within the city limits about fifteen years ago.

Mr. Mercer brought one span of horses and a wagon from the outfit with which he crossed the plains and for some time all the hauling of wood and merchandise was done by him. The wagon was the first one in King county. In 1859 he went to Oregon for the summer and while there married Hester L. Ward, who lived with him nearly forty years, dying last November. During the twenty years succeeding his settlement here he worked hard clearing the farm and carrying on dairying and farming in a small way and doing much work with his team. In 1873 portions of the farm came into demand for homes and his sales soon put him in easy circ.u.mstances and in later years made him independent, though the past few years of hard times have left but a small part of the estate.

The old home on the farm that the Indians spared when other buildings in the county not protected by soldiers were burned, is still standing and is the oldest building in the county. Mr. D. T. Denny had a log cabin on his place which was not destroyed--these two alone escaped. The Indians were asked, after the war, why they did not burn Mercer's house, to which they replied, ”Oh, old Mercer might want it again.” Denny and Mercer had always been particularly kind to the natives and just in their dealings, and the savages seem to have felt some little grat.i.tude toward them.

In the early '40s Mr. Mercer and Rev. Daniel Bagley were co-workers in the anti-slavery cause with Owen Lovejoy, of Princeton, who was known to all men of that period in the great Middle West. Later Mr. Mercer joined the Republican party and has been an ardent supporter of its men and measures down to the present. He served ten years as probate judge of King county, and at the end of that period declined a renomination.

In early life he joined the Methodist Protestant church and has ever been a consistent member of that body. Rev. Daniel Bagley was his pastor fifty-two years ago at Princeton, and continued to hold that relation to him in Seattle from 1860 until 1885, when he resigned his Seattle pastorate.

To Mr. Mercer belongs the honor of naming the lakes adjacent to and almost surrounding the city. At a social gathering or picnic in 1855 he made a short address and proposed the adoption of ”Union” for the small lake between the bay and the large lake, and ”Was.h.i.+ngton” for the other body of water. This proposition was received with favor and at once adopted. In the early days of the county and city he was always active in all public enterprises, ready alike with individual effort and with his purse, according to his ability, and no one of the city's thousands has taken a keener interest or greater pride than he in the recent development of the city's greatness, although he could no longer share actively in its accomplishment. He was exceedingly anxious to see the ca.n.a.l completed between salt water and the lakes.

His oldest daughter, Mrs. Henry Parsons, lives near Olympia, and is a confirmed invalid. The second daughter was the first wife of Walter Graham, of this place, but died in 1862. The next younger daughters, Mrs. David Graham and Mrs. C. B. Bagley, lived near him and cared for him entirely since the death of Mrs. Mercer last November. In all the collateral branches the aged patriarch leaves behind him here in King county fully half a hundred of relatives of greater or lesser degrees of kins.h.i.+p.

His generosity and benevolence have ever been proverbial. The churches, Y. M. C. A., orphanages and other objects of public benevolence and private charity have good cause to remember his liberality. In a period of five years he gave away at least $20,000 in public and private donations.

Judge Mercer was a charter member of the Pioneers' a.s.sociation, and took great interest in its affairs. He always made a special effort to attend the annual meeting, until the last two years, when his health would not permit.

Another of the band of hardy pioneers who laid the foundation of the great commonwealth bounded by California on the south, British Columbia on the north, the Rocky Mountains on the east and the illimitable Pacific toward the setting sun, has gone to rest.

”Judge Thomas Mercer died yesterday morning, May 25th, at 5:15 o'clock, after a brief illness, at his home in North Seattle, within a stone's throw of the old homestead where he and his four motherless daughters, all mere children, settled in the somber and unbroken forest two score and five years ago, when the Seattle of today consisted of a sawmill, a trading post and less than a half hundred white people.”--(From Post-Intelligencer of May 26th, 1898.)

For many years we looked across the valley to see the smoke from the fire on the Mercer hearthstone winding skyward, for they were our only neighbors. Even for this, we were not so solitary, nor quite so lonely as we must have been with no human habitation in our view. And then we felt the kindly presence, sympathy we knew we could always claim, the cheerful greetings and friendly visits.

When his aged pastor, Rev. Daniel Bagley, with snowy locks, stood above his bier and a troop of silver-haired pioneers in tearful silence harkened, he told of fifty years of friends.h.i.+p; how they crossed the plains together, and of the quiet, steady, Christian life of Thomas Mercer.

He said, ”Whatever other reasons may have been given, that he understood some Indians to say the reason they did not burn Mercer's house during the war, was that Mercer was 'klosh tum-tum,' (kind, friendly, literally a good heart), and 'he wawa-ed Sahale Tyee' (prayed to the Heavenly Chief or Great Spirit). Thus did he let his light s.h.i.+ne; even the savages beheld it.”

In closing a touching, suggestive and affectionate tribute, he quoted these lines:

”O what hath Jesus bought for me!

Before my ravish'd eyes Rivers of life divine I see, And trees of Paradise; I see a world of spirits bright, Who taste the pleasures there; They all are robed in spotless white, And conqu'ring palms they bear.”

HESTER L. MERCER.

When a child I often visited this good pioneer woman--so faithful, cheerful, kind, self-forgetful.

With busy hands she toiled from morning to night, scarcely sitting down without some house-wifely task to occupy her while she chatted.

Of a very lively disposition, her laugh was frequent and merry.

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