Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/63

Rh they understand how to manage as well, they would become rich."

By the summer of 1840 his work was accomplished with apparent success. He had about selected his dwelling-place, having "found on the right branch of Big Battle a valuable spring, good stone-coal, and excellent bottoms, good timber, sugar orchard, good hill land and beautiful situation for dwelling— all right. Course of this branch at the forks is south twenty-one degrees west from a beautiful white oak on which I marked my initials, 23d April." The Oberlin trustees in August, "voted, that the Prudential Committee be authorized to perfect negotiations and convey by deed to Brother John Brown of Hudson, one thousand acres of our Virginia land on the conditions suggested in the correspondence which has already transpired between him and the committee."

Here, however, negotiations stopped, for the renewal of the panic in 1839 overthrew all business calculations until 1842 and later, and forced John Brown to take refuge in formal bankruptcy in 1842. This step, his son says, was wholly "owing to his purchase of land on credit—including the Haymaker farm at Franklin, which he bought in connection with Seth Thompson, of Hartford, Trumbull County, Ohio, and his individual purchase of three