Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/18

8 a lot of the girls and young women who had been made orphans by the Civil War to accompany him to Washington. Quite a large number evinced a willingness to go, but when the time came to start only eleven had found courage to leave their friends and make a journey of seven thousand miles into n wilderness but thinly settled with entire strangers to them. A few of these had to avail themselves of the means provided by Mr. Mercer, but most of them paid their own way.

They left New York in March, 1864, came by way of the Isthmus of Panama and San Francisco. At the latter place quarters were secured for the party on the bark Torrent, which brought them to Port Gamble, then called, Teekalet, and from there the sloop Kidder brought them to Seattle about midnight of May 16, 1864.

Their names were Lizzie M. Ordway, who never married; Georgia Pearson, who married C. T. Terry of Whidby Island—whose daughter Blanche has for years held a responsible position in the office of the city superintendent of schools, and who has performed the duties of the position so acceptably to the patrons of the school; Josephine Pearson, who died not long after her arrival in the Territory, unmarried; Annie May Adams, who married Robert G. Head, a well known printer of Olympia in early days; Miss Cheney, who married Captain Charles H. Willoughby, one of the best known captains in the early United States revenue service, and who held many other responsible positions; Maria Murphy, who returned East a good many years ago; Kate Stickney, who married Walter Graham, who then owned and lived on a beautiful farm on the shore of Lake Washington and now known as Brighton Beach (she did not live many years); Sarah J. Gallagher, who became Mrs. Thomas S. Russell, and after his death was quite wealthy, dying here in Seattle but a few years ago; Kate Stevens, who married Captain Henry Smith, well known on Puget Sound and in British Columbia; Miss Coffman, who married a Mr. Hinckley of Port Ludlow, and subsequently moved to California; Miss Baker, who married a member of the numerous and well known Huntington family of Cowlitz County.