34. A Fortunate Farmer
British Freedom might have been a hardscrabble farmer barely making ends meet from poor soil. Still, he was better off by orders of magnitude where he was in Nova Scotia, as a free man, than he would have been if he had remained in America, as a slave.
He had title to 40 acres of land that, poor as it was, was nonetheless his private property, to do with as he pleased. He also owned one and a half town lots in Halifax – as yet a no-account town of cleared dirt and a few cabins, but one that was destined to grow, and with it, the real estate value of British Freedom’s lots.