[1] Born in Plymouth, England on 18 June 1802,[2] he was a close relative of John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent, the admiral who fought Napoleon.

Soon after moving to Cape Town, he found a job as a clerk in the trading firm Hudson, Donaldson & Dixon and worked his way up to being its manager - a position he held throughout his life until he retired from business in 1864.

He came to have a presence in many of the Cape's institutions, including directorship in Mutual Life (1846), the Union Bank (1847), the Harbour Board and even the South African College (1860).

[3] Jarvis married an Afrikaans woman, Elizabeth Maria Vos, joining the local Dutch Reformed Church (where he was later made an Elder) in order to do so.

In addition, the city of Cape Town was set up with a Board of Commissioners (later, Municipal Council) in 1840 and Jarvis was immediately elected onto it, soon becoming its chairman.

[8] The Cape's economy was in a severely depressed state in the 1860s, and Jarvis's vast business interests were one of the many victims of this economic stagnation.

He unsuccessfully prospected for coal in the Cape Town City Bowl area, before setting up a Manganese mining venture outside Paarl.