Mercer County is a county located in the U. S. state of Illinois. According to the 2010 census, it had a population of 16,434, its county seat is Aledo. Mercer County is included in IA-IL Metropolitan Statistical Area. Mercer County is named for Hugh Mercer, a physician and general during the American Revolution who died from wounds suffered at the Battle of Princeton. In May 1812, Congress passed an act which set aside lands in Arkansas and Illinois as payment to volunteer soldiers in the War of 1812. Mercer County was part of this "Military Tract." Seven years after Illinois became a state, Mercer County was founded. It was formed from unorganized territory near Pike County on January 13, 1825. Although the county had been created, its government was not organized for several years; the organization of the county government was completed in 1835, after a large influx of settlers following the Black Hawk War. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 569 square miles, of which 561 square miles is land and 7.5 square miles is water.

In recent years, average temperatures in the county seat of Aledo have ranged from a low of 11 °F in January to a high of 84 °F in July, although a record low of −30 °F was recorded in February 1905 and a record high of 113 °F was recorded in July 1936. Average monthly precipitation ranged from 1.27 inches in January to 4.43 inches in June. U. S. Highway 67 Illinois Route 17 Illinois Route 94 Illinois Route 135 Rock Island County - north Henry County - east Knox County - southeast Henderson County - south Warren County - south Des Moines County, Iowa - southwest Louisa County, Iowa - west As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 16,434 people, 6,734 households, 4,724 families residing in the county; the population density was 29.3 inhabitants per square mile. There were 7,358 housing units at an average density of 13.1 per square mile. The racial makeup of the county was 98.3% white, 0.3% black or African American, 0.3% Asian, 0.1% American Indian, 0.3% from other races, 0.7% from two or more races.

Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 1.9% of the population. In terms of ancestry, 25.9% were German, 18.2% were Irish, 11.3% were English, 9.4% were Swedish, 7.4% were American. Of the 6,734 households, 30.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 58.3% were married couples living together, 7.9% had a female householder with no husband present, 29.8% were non-families, 25.8% of all households were made up of individuals. The average household size was 2.41 and the average family size was 2.88. The median age was 43.7 years. The median income for a household in the county was $50,909 and the median income for a family was $62,025. Males had a median income of $46,136 versus $30,392 for females; the per capita income for the county was $25,332. About 8.2% of families and 9.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 14.9% of those under age 18 and 7.2% of those age 65 or over. Aledo Keithsburg New Boston Mercer County is divided into fifteen townships: Historically, Mercer County was a solidly Republican Yankee-influenced county, before the Republican Party existed a stronghold of the Whig Party.

The county never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate until Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide over Barry Goldwater – the solitary break in Whig and Republican dominance occurring in 1912 when the GOP was mortally split and Progressive Theodore Roosevelt carried the county over conservative incumbent President William Howard Taft. After Johnson’s victory in the county, Mercer voted to being Republican between 1968 and 1984, but Reagan’s landslide in that election saw a swing to the Democrats, capitalized upon by Michael Dukakis to carry the county in 1988. Between and 2012, Mercer was solidly Democratic, but concern over declining economic opportunities in the “Rust Belt” caused a dramatic swing to populist Republican Donald Trump in 2016. Trump’s performance was the best by a Republican since Richard Nixon's 3,000-plus-county landslide in 1972. Mercer County is located in Illinois's 17th Congressional District and is represented by Democrat Cheri Bustos. Within the Illinois House of Representatives, the county is located in the 74th district and is represented by Republican Daniel Swanson.

The county is located in the 37th district of the Illinois Senate, is represented by Republican Chuck Weaver. National Register of Historic Places listings in Mercer County, Illinois William C. Ives, "Abraham Lincoln in Mercer County, Illinois, 1832, 1834, 1858," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, vol. 101, pp. 329–347. History of Mercer and Henderson Counties, Together with Biographical Matter, Etc. Chicago: H. H. Hill and Company, 1882. Official website Illinois Ancestors Mercer County

The following is a list of notable events and releases of the year 1926 in Norwegian music. September9 – Anton Jörgen Andersen and cellist. January9 – Randi Hultin, jazz critic and impresario. March1 – Erik Bye, artist, film actor, folk singer and radio and television personality. June6 – Kristian Bergheim, jazz saxophonist. July7 – Jostein Eriksen, opera singer. October19 – Arne Bendiksen, singer and record producer. November21 – Odd Børretzen, illustrator, text writer, folk singer, artist. December10 – Dag Schjelderup-Ebbe, composer, music critic and biographer. 1926 in Norway Music of Norway

Tracy Anne Stockwell, OAM, née Tracy Anne Caulkins, is an American former competition swimmer, three-time Olympic gold medalist, five-time world champion, former world record-holder in three events. Caulkins was noted for her versatility and ability in all four major competitive swimming strokes: the butterfly, breaststroke and freestyle. Caulkins won forty-eight national championships and set American records in all four strokes over a range of distances as well as in the individual medley events, which combine all four strokes over the course of a single race, her versatility brought Caulkins many titles and awards, as a result she is considered one of the greatest swimmers of all time. By the time she retired from competitive swimming in 1984, Caulkins had set five world records and sixty-three American records. Caulkins was born in Winona, Minnesota in 1963, she swam for the Westside Victory Swim club and the Nashville Aquatic Club in Nashville, where she was trained by future University of Texas and U.

S. Olympic coach Paul Bergen. For her high school education, she attended the all-girls Harpeth Hall School in Nashville. Caulkins' older sister Amy was a competition swimmer and water polo player; as a 9-year-old, Caulkins had been training as a swimmer for a little over a year when she watched the 1972 Munich Olympics on television, decided that she wanted to swim in the Olympics and win a gold medal. In a 1997 interview, Caulkins credited her Olympic dream as her motivation. Thirteen-year-old Caulkins competed in her first U. S. national swimming championships in 1976. A year she returned to the 1977 U. S. Short-Course Championships to set U. S. records in the 400-yard individual medley events. She set a third U. S. record while finishing second behind Canadian swimmer Robin Corsiglia in the 100-yard breaststroke. At the age of 15, Caulkins won five gold medals and a silver medal at the 1978 World Championships in West Berlin, she won the 200-meter individual medley, the 400-meter individual medley, the 200-meter butterfly, was a member of the winning U.

S. teams in the 4×100-meter medley relay, the 4×100-meter freestyle relay. In the process, she set one American record; as a result of her performance in Berlin, Caulkins won the 1978 James E. Sullivan Award, given by the Amateur Athletic Union in recognition of the most outstanding American amateur athlete of the year. At 15 years old, she was the youngest-ever recipient of the Sullivan Award, she followed her World Championship success with a series of dominating finishes in U. S. competition. At the 1979 U. S. Short-Course Championships in East Los Angeles, she set five U. S. records in the 100-yard breaststroke, 500-yard freestyle, the 400-yard individual medley, the 200-yard individual medley, the 100-yard freestyle on the first leg of the 400-yard relay. She helped her club team, Nashville Aquatic, win the 400-yard medley relay and place second in the 800-yard freestyle relay. Despite setting the new records, she was not at her physical best. Three months she won four gold medals and two silvers at the 1979 Pan American Games in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Following her gold-medal performance at the 1978 World Championship, Caulkins was expected to win multiple medals at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, USSR, qualified to compete in five individual events at the U. S. Olympic Trials, would have been selected as a member of one of the relay teams as well. However, the U. S. Olympic team boycotted the 1980 Games at the behest of U. S. President Jimmy Carter, following the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Caulkins' dream of Olympic gold was deferred by war and politics, so she looked ahead to 1984; as an 18-year-old high school senior, she set four American short-course records at the 1981 U. S. Short-Course Championships in Massachusetts. In each of the four events, she bettered her own previously-set American record: the 100-yard breaststroke, 200-yard backstroke, the 200-yard individual medley, the 400-yard individual medley. Over the next three years, Caulkins maintained her training regimen while attending the University of Florida in Gainesville, where she swam for coach Randy Reese's Florida Gators swimming and diving team in National Collegiate Athletic Association competition from 1982 to 1984.

Caulkins followed her older sister Amy to the University of Florida, where Amy was an established member of the Florida Gators swim team. With Caulkins leading the way as a freshman, the Gators won the NCAA team championship in 1982. Individually, in three years as a Gator swimmer, she won sixteen NCAA championships and twelve Southeastern Conference individual titles, received twenty-one All-American honors, she was the SEC's Female Swimmer of the Year in 1983 and 1984, was recognized as the SEC's Female Athlete of the Year in 1984. She was the recipient of the Honda Sports Award for Swimming and Diving for three consecutive years, recognizing her as the outstanding college female swimmer of the year. At the 1982 U. S. Short-Course Championships in Gainesville, the 19-year-old again won national championships in the 200-yard backstroke, 400-yard individual medley, the 200-yard individual medley, the 100-yard breaststroke. With thirty-nine national championships to date, Caulkins surpassed the legendary Johnny Weissmuller's record total of thirty-six.

As she continued to win against fellow Americans in 1982 and 1983, she was slumping and falling behind her int