So it happened that John Irons and his family were quickly and comfortably settled in their new home and the children at work in school.

He soon bought some land, partly cleared, a mile or so down the river and began to improve it.
"You've had lonesome days enough, mother," he said to his wife.

"We'll live here in the village.

I'll buy some good, young niggers if I can, and build a house for 'em, and go back and forth in the saddle." The best families had negro slaves which were, in the main, like Abraham's servants, each having been born in the house of his master.
They were regarded with affection.
It was a peaceful, happy, mutually helpful, God-fearing community in which the affairs of each were the concern of all.

Every summer day, emigrants were passing and stopping, on their way west, towing bateaux for use in the upper waters of the Mohawk.