My Genealogy Hound

JOHN MERCER is one of the substantial farmers and stockmen of Armada township, Buffalo county. He was born in Roxburghshire, Scotland, August 31, 1845, and is the son of George and Isabel (Locky) Mercer, both of whom are natives of Scotland. His father came to America in 1852, and settled in Canada, his wife and family following in 1861. He was a shoemaker by trade, and a member of the old established Church of Scotland, and died in 1862. Young Mercer identified himself with the Union cause by enlisting in the navy August 18, 1864, and belonged to a crew on board the Miami which was ordered up the James river and lay at Dutch Gap canal during the winter of 1864-5. He received his discharge at Philadelphia in June, 1865. After the war he went to Watertown, N. Y., where his mother and two brothers had moved, and engaged with Smith & Lamb, woolen manufacturers; he also worked in the large steam woolen mills at Utica, and at Bridgetown, Me. He afterwards came west and worked in woolen factories in Ohio and Michigan, and as he was thoroughly familiar with almost every department connected with the manufacture of woolen goods, found no trouble in procuring employment at any first-class factory. In the fall of 1873 he concluded to “go west and grow up with the country,” and accordingly he turned up in Buffalo county, Nebr., and within a reasonably short time he was a proprietor of a No. 1 homestead, located in the rich and fertile valley of the Wood river, of which he was one of the first actual settlers. The country was naturally wild and exceedingly dreary to one coming from the far East, and it made no other impression on the mind of young Mercer. He was forty miles from any town, in a country where elk, antelope and deer roamed at will, and along the small streams of which were plenty of beaver and wild-cats. He was fond of hunting, and followed it almost exclusively for three or four winters. It afforded him considerable amusement, and besides it was quite profitable. In fact, there was no other way of making money, and even a bachelor like Mr. Mercer could not live in a wild prairie country without money. He lived in a dug-out, which, in those days, was the only house that guaranteed its occupant absolute shelter from the frequent atmospherical disturbances. But even his dug-out did not protect him from the ravages of the grasshoppers in 1874-5-6. He has seen them three inches thick, and they didn’t seem to smother each other either. A good many settlers got discouraged and left, but he concluded to stick by his claim as long as he could live. He would go to the hill, shoot a deer and trade it for flour and such articles of food as he stood in need of, and in that way he managed to get along. In the fall of 1880 a prairie fire swept everything he had, including his hay and grain in the stack, — everything, in fact, except a patch of sod corn.

John Mercer was married October 11, 1885, to Pauline, daughter of James and Rachael (Spriggs) Stewart. She was born in Marshall county, Ill., February 15, 1854, and has borne him two children — John C., born December 24, 1887, and Edward James, born March 26, 1890. Mr. Mercer belongs to the G. A. R., and is a republican in whom there is no guile. He has two hundred and forty acres of fertile land and takes great pride in breeding good horses, of which he is a splendid judge.