No. 29

Dear Stewart,

Here is one from a long ride back from their survey of Sodus Bay, New York, autumn 1817. This is when sixteen-year-old 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 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 business with that extrovert Thomas Jefferson Dudley, who was, like Henry, sweet on Caroline Howell Bull, the Colonel’s daughter. Well, Henry could get over that—there were plenty of apples in the bunch—but Dudley was just as driven and energetic as Valentine and the two of them (Val and Dudley) would clash in how to calculate risk and route.

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.”

Henry gave him the reins.

Valentine picked up the topic again, asking his son, “What do you have against Dudley?”

Valentine wasn’t planning to have the core of this talk so soon but reasoned that it was best to get it over with before the break in quiet, before Lyons. And he didn’t wait for his son to answer.

“Dudley might be is attached to slavery as I was,” Valentine said. “When William’s father escaped from me and ran to Fort Erie—this was when you were about four, I think—I took to beating him and I was pounced upon by his negro mob. I escaped only with the help of Dudley’s father, so I owe him for helping me get to the Canadian authorities to drag William back.”

Henry remembered this, only from his playmate’s cries back home then.

“Willie cried a lot, I remember that,” Henry said, “And their reunion—I remember that, too.”

“Right,” His father said, “And when we got home that I set them free. Mr. Dudley, who risked his lot for this long, drawn out trek, and so, and well, he remembered it too. You might run into this old business. That family keeps it safe; in the pantry shall we say. But it is not yours to carry. You will have to find a way, on your own, son, to pick it off and flick it. Dudley wont.”

— Miss Minnie

2025 Copyright Christine Friesel