Joseph Hooker Mercer, Live Stock Commissioner for the State of Kansas, was born on a farm near Williamsburg, Noble county, Ohio, Sept. 7, 1864. His father, Newlin Mercer, a farmer by vocation, was also a native of Noble county, Ohio, and was a son of Jacob Mercer. When this great Republic was in peril of dissolution Newlin Mercer tendered his services in the defense of the Union and served throughout the full four years of the great Civil war. Newlin Mercer married Mary Alma Jones, a daughter of John Jones and a native of Noble county, Ohio, who died when her son, Joseph Hooker, was but two years old, leaving not only him, but also two other children, motherless. The other children are Charles Fremont Mercer, now of New Martinsburg, Ill., and Mary Alma, the wife of William Baker, of Boyne City, Mich. The Mercer family is of English, and the Jones family of Welsh descent.

The boyhood of Joseph H. Mercer was spent on the old home farm in Ohio, where, after his mother's death, he was reared by his Grandmother Jones. At the age of thirteen he went to live with his older brother, Charles F., a farmer residing in Tyler county, West Virginia, and spent two years there; then went to live with the family of William I. Boreman, in the town of Middlebourne, the county seat of Tyler county, West Virginia. Mr. and Mrs. Boreman were parents to him in all but fact. Practically all of his early education was obtained in the public schools of Middlebourne, which he attended three years; then he became a teacher in the same schools and taught for three years, after which he attended the Ohio Wesleyan University, at Delaware, Ohio, one term, and then completed a course in Frazier's Business College at Wheeling, W. Va., graduating there in the fall of 1886. After a few months' employment in a grocery store in Wheeling, in March, 1887, he came to Kansas, where he has ever since been a resident of Chase county, in the town of Cottonwood Falls and its vicinity. For five years he was engaged in the grocery business in Cottonwood Falls, and in 1893 he gave up the mercantile business and engaged in farming and stock raising in Chase county, to which he still gives his attention. His farm and place of residence is about eight miles south of Cottonwood Falls, and while in recent years he has held different political positions, which keep him in Topeka most of the time, he still maintains his residence on his Chase county farm.

Politically, he is a Republican and has had much political experience in furthering the interests of his party. He has served as chairman of the Republican County Central Committee of Chase county, and in 1906 was elected a member of the state legislature from that county, serving at present his third consecutive term, having been reëlected in 1908 and again in 1910. In the spring of 1909 he was appointed by governor Stubbs live stock commissioner and is now serving in that capacity. He served as a member of the board of trustees of the Chase County High School from 1900 to 1906.

In July 31, 1890, he was united in marriage with Miss Ula Luma Scribner, of Cottonwood Falls, Kan., where she was born in October, 1871. Four daughters have blessed this union: Elrene Montez, born May 13, 1892; Josephine Mercedes, born Sept. 6, 1897; Bess, born Nov. 13, 1902; and Cora, born July 2, 1907.

In religious belief Mr. Mercer is a Presbyterian, and fraternally he has attained the thirty-second degree as a Scottish Rite Mason. He is a member of the Modern Woodmen of America, and also of the Elks' order, and he is secretary of the Kansas Live Stock Associaton.