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.

Born in Boston to a Boston Brahmin family, William Jarvis was the son of Dr. Charles Jarvis, a Boston physician who owned the former Governor William Shirley house on today's State Street. 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. Like other prominent Bostonians of his day, Jarvis had a mingling of Revolution and money-making in his genes.

He was sent to schools in Boston, Philadelphia and New Jersey, and completed his mercantile training in a Norfolk, Virginia, counting house. He returned to Boston and entered into business for himself. Within six years disaster struck: Jarvis had guaranteed the debt of a New York City mercantile house belonging to a friend and business associate, which obligation the friend defaulted on. Jarvis paid off the liabilities, but it entailed selling many of his own assets. Fledgling merchant Jarvis was nearly wiped out. To recoup his fortune, he bought a clipper ship and moved to Europe, where he dealt widely across the continent in commodities and built a successful trading house, William Jarvis & Co.

As a result of his European trading, Jarvis became familiar with Lisbon, Portugal, and being well-connected in Washington, D.C., was appointed by President Thomas Jefferson as the United States consul in Lisbon. Jarvis served in the post for a decade. Before returning to the United States, Jarvis purchased a flock of some 4,000 merino sheep and smuggled them out of Spain, taking advantage of Napoleon's conquest in snapping the Spanish stranglehold on the merino wool market. It was a strategic move: Jarvis kept State Department officers apprised of his every move in snagging some of the rare merinos.

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