In process of time he became owner of the sail loft and also of a good house in the city. He married a worthy woman and they brought up a family of eight children. But though he had served his country faithfully in his youth, though he had earned a hundred thousand dollars by his ingenuity and diligence, and though his character rendered him an ornament to the Episcopal Church to which he belonged, yet so strong was the mean and cruel prejudice against his color that his family were excluded from schools where the most ignorant and vicious whites could place their children. He overcame this obstacle at great expense by hiring private teachers in various branches of education. By the unrivalled neatness and durability of his work and by the uprightness of his character he obtained extensive business, and for more than fifty years employed many people in his sail loft.