The elements of tragedy mark Mercer's final years--the tragedy of John
Mercer and Marlborough interwoven with the epic failures of the colonial
experiment. Prompted by his illness, he quit his legal practice in the
courts in 1765. In the same year he "gave notice to the members of the
Ohio Company, that my health & business would not longer allow me to
concern myself in their affairs which they had entirely flung upon my
hands." He also "on account of my deafness, refused to act as a justice,
which I should not have done otherwise, as I have the satisfaction to
know that I have done my country some service in this station."
Heavily in debt, disillusioned and embittered by the dwindling results
of his struggles, he wrote that "I have attended the bar thirty-six
years, through a perpetual hurry and uneasiness, and have been more
truly a slave than any one I am, or ever was, master of; yet have not
been able, since the first day of last January, to command ten pounds,
out of near ten thousand due me." Recoiling from his situation, he
desperately sought a way out and a means to recover his losses. With
self-deceptive optimism he seized upon the idea of establishing a
brewery at Marlborough, since "our Ordinaries abound & daily increase
(for drinking will continue longer than anything but eating)."
Accordingly, he built a brewhouse and a malthouse, each 100 feet long,
of brick and stone, together with "Cellars, Cooper's house & all the
buildings, copper & utensils whatever, used about the brewery." He
depended at first on his windmill for grinding the malt, but to avoid
delays on windless days, "I have now a hand-mill fixed in my brewhouse
loft that will grind 50 bushels of malt (my coppers complement) every
morning they brew."
To get his project under way, Mercer plunged further into the depths of
debt by buying 40 Negroes "to enable me to make Grain sufficient to
carry on my brewery with my own hands." These cost £8000, "a large part
of which was unpaid, for payment of which I depended on the Brewery
itself & the great number of Debts due to me." But the external fate
which was driving him closer and closer to destruction now struck with
the death of John Robinson, treasurer of the colony, who, having lent
public funds promiscuously to debtor friends, had left a deficiency of
£100,000 in the colonial treasury. A chain reaction of suits developed,
threatening James Hunter of Fredericksburg, Mercer's security for
purchase of the slaves.
The brewery lumbered and stumbled. Mercer's first brewer, a young Scot
named Wales, prevailed upon him to spend £100 to alter the new
malthouse. On September 16, 1765, William King, evidently a master
brewer, arrived. He immediately found fault with Wales' changes in the
malthouse. Within three weeks, however, King died. King's nephew, named
Bailey, then came unannounced with a high recommendation as a brewer
from a man he had served only as a gardener. Mercer was impressed: "You
may readily believe I did not hesitate to employ Bailey on such a
recommendation, more especially as he agreed with King in blaming the
alteration of the malt house & besides found great fault with Wales's
malting." Faced with rival claims as to which could brew better beer,
Mercer allowed each to brew separately. "Yet though Bailey found as much
fault with Wales's brewing as he did with his malting, that brewed by
Wales was the only beer I had that Season fit to drink." Wales, however,
brewed only £40 worth of beer, barely enough to pay his wages, let alone
maintenance for himself and his wife. Although Bailey brewed enough to
send a schooner load of it to Norfolk, it was of such "bad character"
that only two casks were sold, the remainder having been stored with
charges for two months, then brought back to Marlborough, where an
effort to distill it failed.
In 1766 there was a similar tale. Five hundred fifty bushels of malt
were produced, but much of the beer and ale was bad. In January 1766,
Andrew Monroe[140] was employed as overseer. "Wales complains of my
Overseer & says that he is obliged to wait for barley, coals & other
things that are wanted which, if timely supplied with he could with six
men & a boy manufacture 250 bushels a week which would clear £200.... My
Overseer is a very good one & I believe as a planter equal to any in
Virginia but you are sensible few planters are good farmers and barley
is a farmer's article," Mercer wrote to George. Besides the overhead of
slaves and nonproductive brewers, the establishment required the
services of two coopers at £20 per year.
Purdie & Dixon's _Virginia Gazette_ for April 10, 1766, carried the
advertisement of Mercer's brewery: