Bracewell had been so perpetually busy, a reporter for the New Era newspaper joked, he had no time to get sick. “His wife and daughter spin and weave all the cloth that he and those boys wear, and he has built with his own hands his own dwelling house, outside store-house, weaving and loom house for his wife, and a house for tanning.”
Even more successful than Bracewell was Solomon Hill, a carpenter, cabinet maker, blacksmith, engineer and farmer who could neither read nor write. He arrived in 1871 with $30, all of which was spent to build his first temporary residence. By 1889, a visitor called him “probably the most independent man” in West Africa. Hill planted 180 acres of coffee alone, along side foodstuff.
In 1889, he had “more than fifty bags of coffee from last season, which he has been under no necessity to sell. It is now thoroughly cured and will command a high price. He will produce ten thousand pounds of coffee this season, besides other agricultural articles.”
Footnote: “Arthington, Liberia,” African Repository, Nov. 1873, p. 337; “Visit to Arthington, African Repository, April 1889, p. 44.
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