On April 1, 1750, Mercer went to Williamsburg for the spring session and
stopped en route to visit his friend Dr. Mungo Roy at Port Royal in
Caroline County. He remained at Williamsburg until the seventh, except
for going on the previous day to "Greenspring" to be entertained by
Philip Ludwell in the Jacobean mansion built a century earlier by
Governor Berkeley. Again stopping off at Port Royal, he returned home on
May 10. He remained there until June 15, when he made the laconic entry
in his journal: "My wife died between 3 & 4 at noon." What time this
denotes is unclear.
Following this loss--Catherine Mercer was only 43--Mercer remained at
home for five days, then visited his sister-in-law Mrs. Ann Mason. The
next night he stayed with the pastor of Aquia Church, Mr. Moncure, then
returned to Marlborough and remained there for nearly a month.
Meanwhile, he purchased from Fielding Lewis, at a cost of £3 18s.
7-1/2d., "sundrys for mourning." William Thomson, the Stafford tailor,
made his mourning clothes. The preparations for the funeral must have
been elaborate; it was not held until July 13.
[Illustration: Figure 15.--PORTRAIT OF ANN ROY MERCER, John Mercer's
second wife and the daughter of Dr. Mungo Roy of Port Royal, painted in
1750 or shortly thereafter. (_Courtesy of Mrs. Thomas B. Payne._)]
At the end of July Mercer went to Williamsburg, thence to Yorktown, and
from there to Hampton and Norfolk by water on an "Antigua Ship,"
returning to Hampton on August 5 on a "Negro Ship," evidently having
caught passage on oceangoing traders. The younger children remained in
Williamsburg with George and a nurse. On September 8 he went to Port
Royal and stayed "at Dr. Roy's." He returned home on the 10th, then went
back to Port Royal on the 14th, staying at Dr. Roy's until the 20th,
attending Sunday church services during his visit. He returned home
again on the 23rd, only to visit Dr. Roy once more on the 28th. The
October court session drew him to Williamsburg, where he remained until
November 7. While there, he purchased the following from James
Craig,[119] a jeweler:
£ s. d.
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.