She was apparently interested in everything Henry had to say, and since exchanging information had always been one of his favorite pastimes, they got along well from their first meeting. They were never at a loss for words, both waiting expectantly for their next opportunity to speak. Sophie’s family was from Scotland, and her uncle still worked in a firm where her father had also been employed. Their primary business was buying tobacco, grading its quality, packing it in large hogsheads, and shipping it to Glasgow. There seemed to be a deep antagonism between the Scots and the English merchants in Norfolk, so Henry heard only disparaging comments from Sophie about anything to do with London.

Henry was eager to meet her uncle and was soon invited to their home, where he immediately felt at ease. Mr. Knox was proud of his work and relished telling Henry of the firm’s progress and its ability to triumph over English competitors in capturing the lucrative tobacco trade. His particular responsibility was to expand the exchange of goods with Virginia farmers, who increasingly depended on the firm’s providing them with whatever was necessary to produce a crop and to survive during the winter. He was not at all ashamed of their techniques for forging an almost inseparable tie to these producers of tobacco and wheat, based on a liberal credit policy that almost invariably resulted in indebtedness that could rarely be settled with the proceeds from a single crop. The farm families were, therefore, obliged to continue the exchange of their crops and livestock for implements, consumer goods, household supplies, food staples, and a limited amount of cash during the growing season. Because of his religious beliefs, Mr. Knox was personally opposed to slavery, but his business obligations permitted him to be flexible on the subject. There were some families in the area who refused to purchase slaves and insisted on working their own land, but Mr. Knox told Henry that the average tobacco producer in Virginia possessed twenty slaves.

He explained that although otherwise highly competitive, the merchants in Norfolk usually refrained from competing with one another for business with a family that was already obligated to a firm. Since there was usually no other source of dependable credit, this permitted the merchants to “buy low and sell high,” which produced maximum profit among them all. Factors and bankers in Glasgow and London backed Mr. Knox’s company and others like it that provided year-round loans to colonial farmers. Interest rates were high, and the risks of losses were minimal. The danger of unpaid bills was offset by security deeds on land, property, and slaves, which more than covered the debts, and the merchants and factors frequently wound up owning plantations and smaller farms when the owners could not pay and faced foreclosure. As often as not, the bankrupt families simply abandoned their estates to move quietly to frontier lands for a new start.