 While the union of the two houses was officially sealed in 1761, the Eyres seem to have begun assuming a larger role in the Wright shipping business at an earlier period; in 1759, a twenty-one-year-old Jehu Eyre accepted a royal commission to build boats for the navigation of the Ohio River.The Eyre brothers had, in any case, taken full control of Philadelphia's greatest shipping business by the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, and their new position helped them make decisive contributions to the independence effort.In 1803 the family's mercantile business was merged with that of Philadelphia merchant Charles Massey to become the firm of Eyre & Massey, one of the largest trading ventures in the world.