John Mercer
born 1676 Elizabeth, New Jersey
died 1747
father:
Moses
Mercer, b. 1654
mother;
siblings:
spouse (1st):
Elizabeth
Bentley,
married 1708 Elizabethtown, New Jersey
children:
Gideon
Mercer, b. 1709, d.
spouse (2nd):
Sarah Ann Moore
married
1713
children:
Edward Mercer
William Mercer
Jonathon Mercer
Robert
Mercer
David Mercer
Job Mercer
Blanch Mercer
Elizabeth Mercer married
John Brown
Jane Mercer
Diana Mercer
biographical:
The above
information is part of the "Mercer Scam".
the information below incorporates
some of it but also has a good description of the Mercer homestead in Virginia.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/elledorado/item3body.html
The
Mercer lineage was introduced into the Campbell line by the marriage of the two sisters
Phoebe and Sarah Mercer to the two brothers William and Arthur Campbell. The Mercers
were of Quaker stock, and their line goes back to a John Mercer, a merchant of New
York City. He was an extensive land owner on Manhattan Island, his lands extending
from about 76th Street northward. He was twice married. By his first wife, Elizabeth
Bentley, daughter of William and Mary Catherine (Townley) Bentley, he had a son Gideon,
and by his second wife, Mary Moore, a daughter Elizabeth.
Gideon Mercer was the
father of Robert Mercer, who settled on the old Mercer homestead near Morgantown,
W. Va. in 1766. Gideon Mercer was married twice. First to a Mary Harper, and after
her death to her sister Sarah. So far as known there were no children by the second
wife, but by the first wife Gideon Mercer had three sons: Napoleon and Job, twins;
and Robert, born in 1741.
Elizabeth, the daughter of John Mercer by his second
wife, was married to a John Brown, and by him had a daughter Elizabeth, born in 1747.
This Elizabeth Brown became the wife of her first cousin Robert Mercer, the son of
Gideon.
Robert Mercer was married to Elizabeth Brown on Sept. 1, 1766, the marriage
taking place in Chester County, Pa., where the Brown family resided. Whether Robert
Mercer and his father Gideon were also residents of this locality is not known, but
the assumption is that they were. A granddaughter of Elizabeth Brown, Minerva Mercer,
told the late Rev. James O. Campbell in 1901 that as a child she had lived with her
grandmother, and that she was a “real Quaker,” and in her conversation always used
the Quaker expressions “thee” and “thou.”
Following his marriage in 1766 Robert
Mercer and his wife Elizabetth Brown settled on a tract of land about five miles
northwest of the present Morgantown, W. Va., but then in Ohio County, Virginia. To
them twelve children were born: Olive, born in 1767; John, born in 1768; Joseph,
born April 7, 1770; Robert, born in 1772; Levi, born in 1780, Elizabeth, born in
1783; Rachel; Abner, born in 1787; Leah, born in 1791. The youngest daughter Leah
married her first cousin Robert Mercer, a son of Job Mercer and his wife Margaret
Gordon.
This old Mercer homestead is located in the center of a beautiful semi-circular
valley far up in the West Virginia hills, about a mile and a quarter northward from
Laurel Point, a small settlement of houses on the Fairmont Highway some four miles
west of Morgantown. None of the original buildings are now in existence, the old
log cabin home having been torn down since 1901. It was located just a few feet to
the right of a present day log cabin that serves as a sort of outhouse to the main
residence of frame construction.
Directly up the hill from the residence is an
orchard containing the old Mercer burial ground. This plot is some 50 feet square,
completely enclosed with a fence, and with three, or perhaps four, rows of graves,
all marked with small sandstone slabs at head and foot, but a majority without identifying
inscription. Near the top of the plot are three modern monuments, the center one
marking the grave of Minerva Mercer, born in 1817, died in 1902. On the left side
is a monument to William Mercer, a son of Abner, the father of Jesse Mercer, owner
of the farm in 1933. Robert Mercer, the original settler, is buried in about the
exact center of the plot, and his son Abner two or three graves to the left in the
same row. As all graves in this row are without inscription they can be identified
only approximately.
It was at this old homestead, and in the original log
cabin that Joseph Mercer was born on April 7, 1770. He was married on Sept. 9, 1790
to Comfort Nottingham, and their marriage is on record at Winchester, Va. then the
county seat of Frederick County, to which the area around Morgantown belonged.
John
Mercer, an older brother of Joseph Mercer, was born at the old homestead on Oct.
21, 1768, and was married on September 12, 1792 to Ann Babb, for whose family Babb's
Island in the Ohio River opposite East Liverpool, Ohio was named. Sometime between
this marriage and the year 1800 the two brothers Joseph and John Mercer and their
families came down the Monongahela River to Redstone Old Fort, now Brownsville, Pa.,
where they tarried until early in the year 1802 when they made a second move, and
came and settled on the south side of Beaver County, Pa.
Their residence here
was of some duration, in Joseph's case at least 20 years, but each made a subsequent
and final move to the state of Ohio, meanwhile leaving descendants behind to perpetuate
the name in Beaver County. John Mercer seems to have been the first of the two brothers
to migrate, making a settlement in Belmont County, Ohio, where some of his children
had preceded him. His two sons, Reece and Silas, remained behind and established
their own homes near the West Virginia line. Joseph Mercer maintained his residence
in the county until 1822, when he followed his younger son Joseph to a new settlement
in Jackson County, Ohio. His eldest son Nottingham lived and died in Mercer County,
Ohio, and was married to a Hannah Traxler. Nottingham was a soldier in the War of
1812, a member of Captain William Calhoun's company, 138th Regiment, recruited on
the south side of Beaver County. This company marched to Erie, Pa., by way of Meadville,
and there served a tour of duty during the months of January, February, and March,
1814.
It must of been during Joseph Mercer's residence on Service Creek that
his daughter Phoebe had her encounter with a pack of wolves. Quite likely, too, it
was in the dead of winter at the end of the protracted and severe cold wave, when
the animals were ravenous with hunger. Phoebe had ridden her saddle horse over the
forest trail to the store at Burgettstown, Pa., the buying center of the day, to
purchase some cotton batting for a comfort[er] she was making. While on the homeward
journey a pack of wolves encountered her trail, and started in pursuit. By racing
her horse she hoped to out distance the pack, and reach her home in safety, but as
the minutes flew by she noticed that the space between them was becoming ever narrower,
and the pack was revealing no inclination whatever of relinquishing the chase. Her
horse showing signs of exhaustion she knew that some expedient must be adopted to
permit the animal to regain its wind, else both horse and rider would become a prey
to the hungry beasts. Grasping a handful of cotton she threw it behind her speeding
horse and noted with satisfaction that the wolves stopped and sniffed it before continuing
the pursuit. This enabled her horse to gain some little ground before the chase was
resumed. Every few moments now she would drop a wad of cotton, and always with the
same result. When she finally reached the shelter of her own home her supply of cotton
was completely exhausted.
John Mercer lived to be over 90 years of age, and
died at his home in Belmont County. Joseph Mercer died in Jackson County on Aug.
7, 1835. Both he and his wife, together with several other Mercer's are buried on
the Emery Sim's place about eight miles out of Jackson, Ohio on the Four Mile Pike.
Joseph
Mercer and his wife Comfort (Nottingham) Mercer were the parents of seven children:
Nottingham; Elizabeth; Robert, born in December 25, 1795; married Betsey Boyd Smith,
daughter of David and Mary Boyd Smith; Mary, born 1797; Phoebe, born February 14,
1800, married about 1832 William Campbell, son of William and Agnes (Vance) Campbell;
Sarah, born March 7, 1802, married February 22, 1822 to Arthur Campbell, son of William
and Agnes (Vance) Campbell; Joseph, born 1804.
Note: The descendants of Phoebe
Mercer (Campbell) No. 50 and Sarah Mercer (Campbell) No. 52 are not repeated here,
as they will be found in their appropriate place in the Campbell Geological Records.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In
July of 1988, I made the first of many solo trips to the area around the WV panhandle,
to dig up family history. My favorite places are small-town libraries, which often
have collections of local history and genealogy (or can tell you who does).
One
of my first stops was at the Carnegie Library in Beaver Falls, PA, where I met librarian
Vivian McLaughlin. Vivian showed me to the library’s History Center. She retrieved
her “Mercer” folder for me, and produced the following report. I had a vague recollection
of my favorite aunt showing me a copy of this report years before, but I couldn’t
be sure.
I read this report avidly, and decided ~ then and there ~ that I
was going to find the Mercer Homestead described in its pages. Through a remarkable
series of events, I did just that, and had quite an adventure in the process.
Years
had passed since the report was written, but the site was unmistakable. It is in
a semi-circular valley...near Laurel Point. The orchard and the fence are no longer
there. But “directly up the hill from the residence” there are “three modern monuments”
in the “old Mercer burial ground”.
This report was meticulously typed, but
bears neither a date, nor an author’s name. It does contain a statement about “Jesse
Mercer, owner of the farm in 1933.” From this, we can infer that the report was written
no earlier than 1933.
Because this report refers to another, on the Campbell
family, I decided (sometime later) to contact the Carnegie Library in Beaver Falls
in hopes of getting a copy of the Campbell report. I received copies of two Campbell
reports: one dated 1932, written by Rev. James O. Campbell (whose 1901 experiences
at the homestead are mentioned in the Mercer report); the other dated 1945, written
by W. Sutherland Campbell.
The similarities in format between 1945 report
and the Mercer Genealogical Record are so strong, I conclude that W. Sutherland Campbell
or his associates created the Mercer writeup, and probably did so around 1945.
I
will also point out that none of these reports bears a copyright notice. It is fair
to assume that these writers were motivated, above all, by a desire to share their
knowledge with others.
Dolores Grahom Doyle has authored the book "Three
Hundred Years in America with the Mercers" with info about John Mercer in Belmont