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1878-1879 Senior year at Harvard. Harry studied Ecclesiastical History, Natural History, Art History, and Music, all elective courses. He graduated A.B., June 1879. Five of his thirteen elective courses had involved history in some form and he had devoted much study to Latin, of which he was especially fond. He had belonged to the Art Club and to four other Harvard undergraduate societies: A.D. Club, O.K. Society, D.K.E. Society, and the Institute of 1770.
1880	January 20: helped found The Bucks County Historical Society. (The BCHS did not have its own building for over 25 years; instead a room in the Doylestown Courthouse was used for its collections.)
October: compiled an immensely detailed list of "Dutch School” prints featured in the Phillips Collection exhibit at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, along with notes on the artists’ styles, techniques, etc. This seems to have been independent research occasioned by his own experiments in print making, for in this year he created an etching—in the style of Rembrandt—which was the first of a series completed in the decade of the eighties.
1880-1881 Academic year: attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Read law in Philadelphia with, among others, his uncle, Peter McCall, husband of his father’s sister.
1881	May 1: elected to membership in the Social Art Club, 1811 Walnut Street, Philadelphia. (Since 1888 the club has been known as The Rittenhouse Club.) Mercer seems to have remained a member all his life, although he changed his status in 1884 from “Resident” to “Nonresident.” In those days, one could board at the club. One may still eat, drink, play whist, euchre, sniff, backgammon, billiards and pool there. (HCM belonged to many social and professional groups during his life. A partial listing follows the final entry.)
November 9: admitted to the Philadelphia County Bar: granted permission to practice as attorney and councillor in the Court of Common Pleas, No. 1.
Note:
There is no evidence that he ever practiced law. Instead, he immediately set off on the first of a series of protracted European jaunts during which he sketched, photographed, collected all sorts of objects, investigated historic sites, and voyaged on the rivers of Egypt and Europe.
Henry Mercer used many details from his photograph of Pine Street (right) as the background for his etching (left), signed and dated 1886. The turreted tower of the courthouse is a dominant feature of each image.
HENRY CHAPMAN MERCER: AN ANNOTATED CHRONOLOGY