The Mercer Girls or Mercer Maids were women who chose to move from the east coast of the United States to the Seattle area in the 1860s at the invitation of Asa Mercer. Mercer, an American who lived in Seattle, wanted to "import" women to the Pacific Northwest to balance the gender ratio. The women were drawn by the prospect of moving to a boomtown with a surplus of bachelors. These events formed the basis of the television series Here Come the Brides. First trip 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. Only one adult out of ten was a woman, and most girls over 15 were already engaged. White men, and women of the Salish tribes, did not always feel mutually attracted. Prostitutes were also scarce, until the arrival of John Pennell and his brothel from San Francisco. In 1864, Asa Mercer decided to go east to find women willing to relocate to Puget Sound. Mercer first enlisted prominent local married couples to act as hosts for the women once they arrived to assuage Victorian era moral concerns over the propriety of importing single women to the frontier. Mercer also had support from the governor of Washington Territory, but the government could not offer any money. Mercer proceeded to travel to Boston and later to the textile town of Lowell and recruited eight young women from Lowell and two from the nearby community of Townsend, willing to move to the other side of the country. They traveled back through the Isthmus of Panama, although in San Francisco locals tried to convince the girls to stay there instead. They arrived in Seattle on May 16, 1864, where the community staged a grand welcome on the grounds of the Territorial University. Only eleven women undertook the journey, well under the fifty initially reported in The Seattle Gazette. 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. Daniel Pearson and Rodolphus Stevens, the fathers of three of the young women, completed the westward party. All but two of the women were married in short order: Josie Pearson who died unexpectedly a short time after she