Pen and Ink Drawing of Wagon with Horses (William Smock) Library of Congress
On the ride back from their survey of Sodus Bay, New York that autumn of 1817, Henry Brother, the father of Civil War Marine Charles Brother, held the reins to their wagon.
His father, former sheriff, state senator, tavern owner, and now prosperous landowner, slumped to one side and slept, cradling his head on the inside of his elbow. Henry noticed how skinny his father’s legs were and covered them with the blanket next to them, which had attached remnants of grass and apple cores from their lunch. He picked the fragments off.
Henry gave serious thought to his father’s encouragement that he go into busines with that extrovert Thomas Jefferson Dudley, who was sweet on Caroline Howell Buell, the Colonel’s daughter, just the same as Henry was. Well, Henry could get over that—there were plenty of pretty girls—but Dudley was just as driven and energetic as Valentine and the two of them (Val and Dudley) would clash in business approach and calculating risk and routes to take.
When Valentine woke up, he wiped the drool from his beard and rubbed his eyes. “Where are we now, boy?”
“Just a few miles from Lyons.”
Valentine said, “Let me take over before we go too much longer, then.”
Henry gave him the reins. “What do you have against Dudley, anyway?”
Valentine wasn’t planning to have “the talk” so soon but reasoned that it was best to get it over with before the break in quiet, before Lyons.
“Dudley might be is attached to slavery as I was. When William’s father escaped from me and ran to Fort Erie—this was when you were about four, I think—I had to beat him terribly and was pounced by his Negro mob, escaping only with the help of Dudley’s father, so I am terribly indebted to him for helping me get to the Canadian authorities to drag him back.”
“Willie cried a lot, I remember that. And their reunion, I remember that.”
“Right. When we got home that I set them free. Mr. Dudley, who risked his lot for this long, drawn out business, never forgave me. You might run into this old business; you will have to pick it off and find a way to let it go. Dudley wont.”