of going to Caroline wholly aside, having been very well
received here, and accommodated with a convenient lodging
till we could prepare things, and have land enough cleared,
and timber and materials provided for building us a house, all
which we managed by the direction of the Quaker; so that in
one year’s time we had nearly fifty acres of land cleared, part
of it enclosed, and some of it planted with tabacco, though
not much; besides, we had garden ground and corn sufficient
to help supply our servants with roots and herbs and bread.
And now I persuaded my husband to let me go over the bay
again, and inquire after my friends. He was the willinger to
consent to it now, because he had business upon his hands
sufficient to employ him, besides his gun to divert him, which
they call hunting there, and which he greatly delighted in; and
indeed we used to look at one another, sometimes with a great
deal of pleasure, reflecting how much better that was, not than
Newgate only, but than the most prosperous of our circumstances
in the wicked trade that we had been both carrying on.
Our affair was in a very good posture; we purchased of the
proprietors of the colony as much land for #35, paid in ready
money, as would make a sufficient plantation to employ
between fifty and sixty servants, and which, being well
improved, would be sufficient to us as long as we could either
of us live; and as for children, I was past the prospect of
anything of that kind.
But out good fortune did not end here. I went, as I have said,
over the bay, to the place where my brother, once a husband,
lived; but I did not go to the same village where I was before,
but went up another great river, on the east side of the river
Potomac, called Rappahannock River, and by this means
came on the back of his plantation, which was large, and by
the help of a navigable creek, or little river, that ran into the
Rappahannock, I came very near it.
I was now fully resolved to go up point-blank to my brother
(husband), and to tell him who I was; but not knowing what
temper I might find him in, or how much out of temper rather,
I might make him by such a rash visit, I resolved to write a
letter to him first, to let him know who I was, and that I was
come not to give him any trouble upon the old relation, which
I hoped was entirely forgot, but that I applied to him as a sister
to a brother, desiring his assistance in the case of that provision
which our mother, at her decease, had left for my support, and
which I did not doubt but he would do me justice in, especially
considering that I was come thus far to look after it.
I said some very tender, kind things in the letter about his
son, which I told him he knew to be my own child, and that
as I was guilty of nothing in marrying him, any more than he
was in marrying me, neither of us having then known our
being at all related to one another, so I hoped he would allow
me the most passionate desire of once seeing my one and only
child, and of showing something of the infirmities of a mother
in preserving a violent affect for him, who had never been
able to retain any thought of me one way or other.
I did believe that, having received this letter, he would
immediately give it to his son to read, I having understood
his eyesbeing so dim, that he could not see to read it; but it
fell out better than so, for as his sight was dim, so he had
allowed his son to open all letters that came to his hand for
him, and the old gentleman being from home, or out of the
way when my messenger came, my letter came directly to my
son’s hand, and he opened and read it.
He called the messenger in, after some little stay, and asked