J. C. Dyer. 313 



tion. It answered its purpose, and Captain Dyer used it 

 till increasing age forced him to be quiet. 



' At the age of sixteen J. C. Dyer entered the counting- 

 house of Monsieur de Nancrede, a French refugee, who had 

 established a large business as importer of European, 

 chiefly English goods. M. de Nancrede returned to France 

 on the repeal of the laws against the tmigrfc, selling the 

 goodwill, &c., of his business to Mr. Dyer and Mr. Eddie, 

 under whose names the business was carried on very 

 successfully ; till it was abruptly ended by the " Non-inter- 

 course Act of Congress" of Jefferson in 1811, forbidding 

 absolutely the importation of English goods. Mr. Dyer 

 had made several voyages to England in the interim, and 

 treating directly with the manufacturers in this country 

 added largely to the profits of the business. In 1811 he 

 left the United States, and in the same year married 

 Eliza Jones, daughter of Somerset Jones, of Gower Street, 

 London, whose acquaintance he had made on his first visit 

 to England in I8O2. 1 Mr. Dyer had taken steps on his 

 first arrival in this country to establish his English nation- 

 ality. Between 1802 and 1811, when he finally left 

 America, he resided chiefly in London, only occasionally 

 returning to Boston to make business arrangements with 

 his partner Mr. Eddie. Though engaged in extensive 

 mercantile transactions, his early bent for mechanics had 

 in no wise lessened, and on his marriage he resolved to 

 confine himself to that line of business exclusively. In his 

 various papers, read before the Literary and Philosophical 

 Society of Manchester, he gives so clear an account of 



1 It may be of interest to say, that on his first visit to Manchester (in 

 1802), the coach left Liverpool at 7 A.M., stopped for breakfast at Prescott, 

 for dinner at Warrington, for tea at Eccles, and reached the Bridgewater 

 Arms at ii P.M. 



