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After nine months' progress . . . coming into our house, I found only my poor wife and a young child of three weeks old in a cradle. She, being surprised, could hardly speak to me, for sheknew not before whether I was dead or alive. . . . [M]y wife soon turned the Holland [fabric] into money. . . . As I remember it sold for nine pounds, which was then our stock; for my wife, having good friends, with her own industry kept me out of debt. . . . [I] came home only my clothes to my back to my poor wife, but poor and penniless yet glad to see each other in health again after these troubles. . . . At this time my wife did begin to keep shop, there being a necessity for something to be done for a livelihood.—Merchant marine Edward Coxere, from his journals, circa 1865 |
