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
furnishings 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 accumulated 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."
[Illustration: Figure 3.--PORTRAIT OF JOHN MERCER, artist unknown. About
1750. (_Courtesy of Mrs. Thomas B. Payne._)]
His sloop was the principal means by which Mercer conducted his
business. Occasionally he rented it for hire, once sharing the proceeds
of a load of oystershells with George Mason and one Edgeley, who had
sailed the sloop to obtain the shells. 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," "Washington's Abridgm^t of y^e
Statutes," and "an Exposition of the Law Terms" to Mosley Battaley.