A brave French Huguenot escaped the brutal persecution of Louis IVX to found thirteen generations of our enterprising Mershon family line in America. Weavers, farmers, soldiers in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, constables, shopkeepers, craftsmen and grocers, they lived in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Missouri until visionary, adventurous Arthur Mershon could not resist the lure of the orange groves and oil wells of California. When his son Benjamin Keith moved on to the Hawaiian Islands, Henri I and his descendants had traveled almost half way around the world.