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 eyes being 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.