Part 3 (2/2)

”Except my education I never got a s.h.i.+lling of my fathers or any other relations estate, every penny I ever got has been by my own industry & with as much fatigue as most people have undergone.”[51]

From his second ledger (the first, covering the years 1720-1724, having been lost) we learn that he was engaged in miscellaneous trading, sailing up and down the rivers in his sloop and exchanging goods along the way. Where his home was in these early years we do not know, but it would appear that he had been active in the Stafford County region for some time, judging from the fact that by 1725 he had acc.u.mulated 322 4s. 5-1/2d. worth of tobacco in a warehouse at the falls of the Rappahannock.[52] He certainly had encountered George Mason before then, and probably Mason's uncles, John, David, and James Waugh, the sons of Parson John Waugh, all of whom owned idle Marlborough properties.

Mercer's friends.h.i.+p with the Masons was sufficiently well established by 1725 that on June 10 of that year he married George's sister Catherine.

This marriage, most advantageous to an aspiring young man, was celebrated at Mrs. Ann Fitzhugh's in King George County with the Reverend Alexander Scott of Overwharton Parish in Stafford County officiating.[53] Thus, allied to an established family that was ”old” by standards of the time and sponsored socially by a representative of the Fitzhughs, Mercer was admitted at the age of 21 to Virginia's growing aristocracy.

In this animated and energetic youth, the Masons and Waughs probably saw the means of bringing Marlborough back to life. Mercer, for his part, no doubt recognized the advantages that Marlborough offered, with its sheltered harbor and landing, its fertile, flat fields, and airy situation. That it could be acquired piecemeal at a minimum of investment through the provisions of the Act for Ports was an added inducement.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] _JHB, 1712-1726_ (Richmond, 1912), pp. 336, 373.

[50] ”Journals of the Council of Virginia in Executive Session 1737-1763,” _VHM_ (Richmond, 1907), vol. 14, pp.

232-235.

[51] _George Mercer Papers Relating to the Ohio Company of Virginia_, comp. and edit. by Lois Mulkearn (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1954), p. 204.

[52] John Mercer's Ledger B is the princ.i.p.al source of information for this chapter. It was begun in 1725 and ended in 1732. The original copy is in the library of the Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, a photostatic copy being in the Virginia State Library. Further footnoted references to the ledger are omitted, since the source in each case is recognizable.

[53] JAMES MERCER GARNET, ”James Mercer,” _WMQ_ [1]

(Richmond, 1909), vol. 17, pp. 85-98. Mrs. Ann Fitzhugh was the widow of William Fitzhugh III, who died in 1713/14. She was the daughter of Richard Lee and lived at ”Eagle's Nest”

in King George County (see ”The Fitzhugh Family,” VHM [Richmond, 1900], vol. 7, pp. 317-318).

JOHN MERCER AS A TRADER

During 1725 Mercer pressed ahead with his trading enterprises. From his ledger we learn that he sold Richard Ambler of Yorktown 710 pounds of ”raw Deerskins” for 35 10s. and bought 200 worth of ”sundry goods”

from him. Between October 1725 and February 1726 he sold a variety of furnis.h.i.+ngs and equipment to Richard Johnson, ranging from a ”horsewhip”

and a ”silk Rugg” to ”1/2 doz. Shoemaker's knives” and an ”Ivory Comb.”

In return he received two hogsheads of tobacco, ”a Gallon of syder Laceground,” and raw and dressed deerskins. He maintained a similar long account with Mosley Battaley (Battaille) (Appendix C). From William Rogers of Yorktown[54] he bought 12 3s. 6d. worth of earthenware, presumably for resale. The tobacco which he had acc.u.mulated at the falls of the Rappahannock he sold for cash to the Gloucester firm of Whiting & Montague, paying Peter Kemp two pounds ”for the extraordinary trouble of y^r coming up so far for it.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 3.--PORTRAIT OF JOHN MERCER, artist unknown. About 1750. (_Courtesy of Mrs. Thomas B. Payne._)]

His sloop was the princ.i.p.al means by which Mercer conducted his business. Occasionally he rented it for hire, once sharing the proceeds of a load of oystersh.e.l.ls with George Mason and one Edgeley, who had sailed the sloop to obtain the sh.e.l.ls. Only one item shows that Mercer extended his mercantile activities to slaves: on February 18, 1726, he sold a mulatto woman named Sarah to Philemon Cavanaugh ”to be paid in heavy tobacco each hhd to weigh 300 Neat.”

That Mercer was turning in the direction of a legal career is revealed in his first account of ”Domestick Expenses” for the fall of 1725 (Appendix D). We find that he was attending court sessions far and wide: ”Cash for Exp^s at Stafford & Spotsylvania,” ”Cash for Exp^s Urbanna,”

the same for ”Court Ferrage at Keys.” He already was reading in the law, and lent ”March's Actions of Slander,” ”Was.h.i.+ngton's Abridgm^t of y^e Statutes,” and ”an Exposition of the Law Terms” to Mosley Battaley.

FOOTNOTES:

[54] William Rogers, who died in 1739, made earthenware and stoneware at Yorktown after 1711. See C. MALCOLM WATKINS and IVOR NOeL HUME, ”The 'Poor Potter' of Yorktown” (paper 54 in _Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology_, U.S. National Museum Bulletin 249, by various authors; Was.h.i.+ngton: Smithsonian Inst.i.tution), 1967.

<script>