Mercer girls arrive in 1860s
Lakeside Cleaners will help keep your overcoat like new. They are members of the National Institute of Cleaning and Dyeing. Phone 207.
OK, in the Feb. 14 Bits & Pieces column, the E-mail from Cheryl segment read as follows:
E-mail from Cheryl
Facts from the past gleaned from the Moses Lake Herald, Columbia Basin Herald and The Neppel Record by Cheryl (Driggs) Elkins:
From the Columbia Basin Herald on Sept. 28, 1950:
Mercer girls arrive in 1860s
The first group of Mercer girls brought to Washington was New England women who had been widowed or orphaned by the Civil War.
Dennis note: This short news item was not a part of Columbia Basin history as far as I know, but rather Washington history. I was curious and conducted a little research.
It seems Asa Mercer brought 11 women, aged 15 to 35 years old, to Seattle in 1864. Their recruitment was to serve as teachers for schools throughout the Washington Territory.
On a second trip in 1866, Mercer brought 40 single women to Seattle, which was far less than the 300 he had planned to bring with him.
The television show "Here Comes the Brides" was loosely based on the history of the Mercer Girls.
Grant County history
The Grant County Historical Society has compiled several volumes of Grant County history. The books are available for purchase at the Historical Society Museum gift shop in Ephrata.
I bought the series in 2009 and secured permission to relay some of the history through this column. Memories of Grant County, compiled from taped interviews by the Grant County Historical Society.
Today we continue with the story of the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project by Jake Weber, recorded on Nov. 9, 1976:
One other interesting fact in my career was the establishment of the rural fire districts, which we organized in Quincy in 1942. I was elected one of the commissioners and have been on the Board ever since. About a week and a half ago Emily and I attended the state meeting over in Olympia and I was firmly convinced that after about 35 years I should quit and I probably will.
Some of you may wonder why there were five directors in the Quincy Irrigation District (remember we were the first District that was actually organized) when the state law only had three directors . Now it was passed through the legislature that we could have five districts, so we divided the five districts north and south, the reason being that the water would come in from the north and gradually creep south, and also to have as nearly as possible an equal amount of land in each one of the districts.
In the East the first district director was Charles Kennedy, the Ephrata district was Vic Bjorklund, Winchester district was Matt DeShaw, the Quincy district east of the George Highway was Gene Huffman and at the other end of it was myself.
Jim O'Sullivan and Billy Clapp were our helpers in all of our district doings and after the other two districts were completed we had at least one monthly meeting. Usually the most central place was Lind where we had our meetings of the three districts and where we ironed out our differences if we had any or our procedures.