When she had been at Mr. Nealy's several months, she began to beg God
most earnestly to send her father to her, and as soon as she commenced
to pray, she began as confidently to look for his coming, and, ere it
was long, to her great joy, he came. She had no opportunity to speak
to him of the troubles that weighed so heavily on her spirit, while he
remained; but when he left, she followed him to the gate, and
unburdened her heart to him, inquiring if he could not do something to
get her a new and better place. In this way the slaves often assist
each other, by ascertaining who are kind to their slaves,
comparatively; and then using their influence to get such an one to
hire or buy their friends; and masters, often from policy, as well as
from latent humanity, allow those they are about to sell or let, to
choose their own places, if the persons they happen to select for
masters are considered safe pay. He promised to do all he could, and
they parted. But, every day, as long as the snow lasted, (for there
was snow on the ground at the time,) she returned to the spot where
they separated, and walking in the tracks her father had made in the
snow, repeated her prayer that 'God would help her father get her a new
and better place.'
A long time had not elapsed, when a fisherman by the name of Scriver
appeared at Mr. Nealy's, and inquired of Isabel 'if she would like to
go and live with him.' She eagerly answered 'Yes,' and nothing
doubting but he was sent in answer to her prayer; and she soon started
off with him, walking while he rode; for he had bought her at the
suggestion of her father, paying one hundred and five dollars for her.
He also lived in Ulster County, but some five or six miles from Mr.
Nealy's.
Scriver, besides being a fisherman, kept a tavern for the
accommodation of people of his own class-for his was a rude,
uneducated family, exceedingly profane in their language, but, on the
whole, an honest, kind and well-disposed people.
They owned a large farm, but left it wholly unimproved; attending
mainly to their vocations of fishing and inn-keeping. Isabella
declares she can ill describe the kind of life she led with them. It
was a wild, out-of-door kind of lief. She was expected to carry fish,
to hoe corn, to bring roots and herbs from the woods for beers, go to
the Strand for a gallon of molasses or liquor as the case might
require, and 'browse around,' as she expresses it. It was a life that
suited her well for the time-being as devoid of hardship or terror as
it was of improvement; a need which had not yet become a want. Instead
of improving at this place, morally, she retrograded, as their example
taught her to curse; and it was here that she took her first oath.
After living with them for about a year and a half, she was sold to one
John J. Dumont, for the sum of seventy pounds. This was in 1810. Mr.
Dumont lived in the same county as her former masters, in the town of
New Paltz, and she remained with him till a short time previous to her
emancipation by the State, in 1828.