By a pair of Earrings 2 12 By a pair of Buttons 2 12 By a plain Ring 1 1 6
On November 8 he returned to Dr. Roy's. On the 10th he added a characteristically sparse note to his chronicle, "Married to Ann Roy."
The period for mourning poor Catherine was short indeed. But the mansion at Marlborough needed a mistress, and Mercer's children, a mother. A new chapter was about to open as the decade closed. From the meticulous records that Mercer kept, it has been possible to see Mercer as a dynamic cosmopolite, accomplishing an incredible amount in a few short years. His constant physical movement from place to place, his reading of the law and of even a fraction of his hundreds of books in science, literature, and the arts, his managing of four plantations, attending two monthly court sessions a year at Williamsburg, looking after the legal affairs of hundreds of clients, concerning himself with the design and construction of a remarkable house and selecting the furnishings for it--all this illustrates a personality of enormous capacity.
Marlborough was now a full-fledged plantation. Although the legacy of an earlier age still nagged at Mercer and prevented him from holding title to much of the old town, he had, nevertheless, transformed it, gracing it with the outspread grandeur of a Palladian great house.
[119] "James CRAIG, _Jeweller_, from LONDON Makes all sorts Jeweller's Work, in the best Manner at his Shop in _Francis_ Street (facing the Main Street) opposite to Mr. Hall's new Store." _Virginia Gazette_, September 25, 1746.
_Mercer and Marlborough, from Zenith to Decline, 1751-1768_
The long last period of Mercer's life and of the plantation he created began at a time of growing concern about the western frontier and the wilderness beyond it. In 1747 this concern had been expressed in the founding of the Ohio Company of Virginia by a group of notable colonial leaders: Thomas Cresap, Augustine Washington, George Fairfax, Lawrence Washington, Francis Thornton, and Nathaniel Chapman. George Mason was an early member, and so, not surprisingly, was John Mercer, whose prestige as a lawyer was the primary reason for his introduction to the company. We learn from the minutes of the meeting on December 3, 1750.