My other son being but a youth, still lived with me. About this time
I chartered a sloop of about thirty tons burthen, and hired men to
assist me in navigating her. I employed her mostly in the wood trade
to Rhode-Island, and made clear of all expenses above one hundred
dollars with her in better than one year. I had then become something
forehanded, and being in my forty-fourth year, I purchased my wife
Meg, and thereby prevented having another child to buy, as she was
then pregnant. I gave forty pounds for her.

During my residence at Long-Island, I raised one year with another,
ten cart loads of water-melons, and lost a great many every year
besides by the thievishness of the sailors. What I made by the water-
melons I sold there, amounted to nearly five hundred dollars. Various
other methods I in order to enable me to redeem my family. In the
night-time I fished with set-nets and pots for eels and lobsters, and
shortly after went a whaling voyage in the service of Col. Smith.
After being seven months, the vessel returned, laden with four hundred
barrels of oil. About this time, I became possessed of another
dwelling-house, and my temporal affairs were in a pretty prosperous
condition. This and my industry was what alone saved me from being
expelled that part of the island in which I resided, as an act was
passed by the select-men of the place, that all negroes residing there
should be expelled.

Next after my wife, I purchased a negro man for four hundred dollars.
But he having an inclination to return to his old master, I therefore
let him go. Shortly after I purchased another negro man for twenty-
five pounds, who I parted with shortly after.