FIRST VENTURES IN BUSINESS 169 



in 1813. 24 If our inferences are correct, the mortgages 

 by which the Audubon and Rozier interests were pro- 

 tected were repeatedly transferred, and the first consid- 

 erable amount of ready money that had appeared in the 

 entire series of transactions was furnished by Mr. 

 Wetherill. It is doubtful if Jean Audubon ever re- 

 ceived any returns from his American farm after the 

 advent of Dacosta in 1803. The ultimate failure of the 

 lead mine was assuredly not the fault of this exploiter, 

 but his dubious methods of accounting and probable 

 failure to keep his contracts no doubt led the naturalist 

 to denounce him as a swindler. 



It may be recalled that in their "Articles of Asso- 

 ciation" Audubon and Rozier had agreed that the house 

 at "Mill Grove" should be "an object separate from all 

 business, in order that we may control this property as 

 long as we desire," but the conditional sale to Dacosta 

 apparently included the farmhouse as well as the land. 



Many of Audubon's references to "Mill Grove" 

 were apparently wide of the mark, but viewed in the 

 light which we have endeavored to shed upon this in- 

 volved affair, they would be in harmony with the essen- 

 tial truth; in writing to the elder Rozier, who became a 

 partner in the enterprise, there was no motive which 

 could have led him to depart from it.* 



25 



24 In 1811 "Mill Grove" was conveyed by Francis Dacosta & Company, 

 to Frederick Beates, who in 1813 sold it to Samuel Wetherill, Jr., for 

 $7,000, the property having shrunk to less than one-half the value placed 

 upon it in 1806. For the enterprises of the Wetherills, see Note, Vol. I, 

 p. 102. 



""Since we have been obliged to enter rather minutely into the his- 

 tory of "Mill Grove," in order to trace the relations of the Audubons to 

 it in an important period of the naturalist's career, the reader may be 

 interested in the anticlimax which its famous mines reached at a later 

 day. The Ecton Consolidated Mining Company had been in operation 

 at "Mill Grove" for a considerable period, when, in 1848, the Perkioming 

 Association was formed and ten thousand dollars was at once invested 

 in machinery. In 1851 these two companies were combined under the 



