Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/359
more to prepare for the removal of his family to St. John.
Leonard Jarvis had in the meanwhile quitted the company and gone into business on his own acccount at Dartmouth, near Rhode Island, one hundred miles from Newburyport. This necessitated a new business arrangement and in May, 1773, a verbal agreement was made between Hazen, Simonds and White to carry on the fishery and trade in their own names in the proportions of one half part on account of Hazen, one third part on account of Simonds and one sixth part on account of White, and they continued to do business at St. John under the name of Hazen, Simonds and White until the latter part of the year 1777 when the events of the Revolution put a stop to all business. As Leonard Jarvis never visited St. John until some years after this time we may regard his connection with the company merely as incidental to his co-partnership with William Hazen. After the discontinuance of the partnership between Hazen and Jarvis, the supplies needed at St. John were furnished by one Samuel Gardiner Jarvis, a leading merchant of Boston.
There can be little doubt that throughout the continuance of the company's operations at St. John, William Hazen was its chief financial strength and that the large outlay required was a source of some embarrassment to him. Quite as much difficulty was experienced in collecting debts in olden times as in days more modern; on this head we have the authority of James Simonds who in a letter to his son Richard, says:—
"At the dissolution of my old partnership concern with Hazen and Jarvis, their debts in this and other countries amounted to a large sum, but it never was in the power of the partners to collect one half of it, and the loss was upwards of 50 percent, besides the immense trouble of recovering: the remaining part—and on the discontinuance of business on my own account I had no better success. In the last instance only, my loss of debts amounted to upwards of £2,000."