Despite all his activities and growing influence, Brown rarely forgot for as much as an hour his humiliation in Augusta and his ultimate and overriding ambition for revenge. After a year in Florida, he received a letter from his plantation manager, Michael Herring, who informed him that he was returning to England, to rejoin his family in Yorkshire. His reason for leaving Georgia was that Chesley Bostick had been commissioned as a captain in the Georgia militia, and his first act had been to plunder Brownsborough. He had transferred the cattle, hogs, and sheep to Augusta and given the plantation workers an option of either prison or service in the revolutionary forces. Herring had been able to escape and had found his way to Savannah. He also informed Brown that Bostick’s first permanent military assignment was to command Fort Howe, on the north bank of the Altamaha River. This was information that Brown had already received from his own sources.

CHAPTER 25

“Common Sense”

1776

The activities of the outside world had hardly touched the daily lives of the Pratts. Ethan continued his quiet and fulfilling life as a farmer and herdsman, concentrating not on further expansion of the fields and grazing areas but on the improvement of those already in use. He rotated his crops as best he could to maintain soil fertility and control erosion, and to take maximum advantage of potential marketing opportunities, mostly through merchants in Wrightsborough. He deliberately limited the size of his swine and cattle herds but attempted to improve the quality of the breeding stock. Somewhat to his surprise, when he had tallied up the records in the winter of 1775, his income from the products of his woodshop almost equaled that of his entire farming operation. Designing and making furniture were where he found the most pleasure.

Ethan was very proud of his son, Henry, now four years old, and had already made a number of toys with which the boy played while his father was immersed at the forge or in the woodworking shop. He was pleased that the boy was always eager to accompany him to the fields and woods; Henry was already learning the rudiments of farming and the life of a trapper and hunter. His constant stream of questions sometimes taxed Ethan’s ability to explain some of his own innate knowledge and basic decisions. For some reason, he was more inclined to share Henry’s more interesting inquiries with the Morrises than with Epsey.