John Ayers & Company, Richmond mercantile firm, was a partnership between John Ayers, Henry Ayers, and Thomas May. Active by 1819, the firm was insolvent in 1822. May wrapped up its affairs and continued as a commission merchant under his own name. He was an agent for the Ætna Insurance Company in 1824 (The Richmond Directory, Register and Almanac, for the Year 1819 [Richmond, 1819], 34; Virginia Patriot, and Richmond Mercantile Advertiser, 3 Aug. 1819; Richmond Enquirer, 25 June, 5 July 1822, 9 Mar., 17 Sept. 1824).

Jechonias Thayer (ca. 1786–1876), merchant, was a native of Braintree, Massachusetts. By 1809 he was a partner in the firm of Austin & Thayer in Boston. During the War of 1812 Thayer served as a paymaster and quartermaster in the Massachusetts volunteer militia. He had his own grocery business in Boston in 1818, and he traded under the name of J. Thayer & Company in New Orleans from about 1836 to 1840. Thayer was a member of the Massachusetts Peace Society and the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture. He died in Boston (Thayer’s passport application, 29 May 1857 [DNA: RG 59, PA]; Boston Gazette, 11 Sept. 1809; Gardner W. Pearson, Records of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia [1913], 68; Massachusetts Register and United States Calendar; For the Year of our Lord 1813 [Boston, (1813)], 174; Boston Daily Advertiser, 21 Dec. 1818, 30 Oct. 1876; Catalogue of the Officers and Members of the Massachusetts Peace Society [Cambridge, Mass., 1819], 4; Massachusetts Agricultural Repository and Journal 7 [1822]: 208; New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, 1 Jan. 1836; New Orleans Daily Picayune, 21 Oct. 1840).