William Jarvis (merchant)

William Jarvis (1770–1859) was an American diplomat, financier and philanthropist best known for introducing the merino breed of sheep into the United States from Spain.

His son William watched the elder Jarvis, an ardent patriot, deliver addresses during the Revolutionary era, and later recalled hearing Boston Sheriff Handerson read the Declaration of Independence from the balcony of the Old State House.

[1] Jarvis was sent to schools in Boston, Philadelphia and New Jersey, and completed his mercantile training in a Norfolk, Virginia, counting house.

[5] Jarvis sold some of his new merino sheep, but kept most of them at his newly purchased estate in Weathersfield, Vermont, where he had secured the services of a Spanish shepherd to tend them.

[6] He employed up to 20 seasonal workers at his Weathersfield Bow compound, census data show, to handle the labor-intensive tasks associated with wool production and sheep raising.

[8] But the industry was held captive to the nation's evolving tariff laws, alternately shielding and then exposing domestic producers to cutthroat foreign competition.

[9] Jarvis himself spent tens of thousands of dollars on pamphlets arguing the case for tariffs and trying to persuade legislators, including Henry Clay, into supporting them.

To have served nine years in a difficult situation, under such able and patriotic presidents as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison is alone a sufficient eulogy on his fidelity and capacity.

He was the first large importer from Spain and distributor throughout the Union of that useful animal, the Merino sheep, which greatly contributed to lay the foundation of the woolen manufactures of this country.

The merino boom gave Vermont farmers a purpose for all those rock cairns dotting the hills they had struggled to till.

Farmers hard-pressed to find enough timber for fencing turned to stone, constructing walls that are now iconic to today's Vermont landscape.