After the original manuscript in possession of Miss Maria R. Audubon.] The division and sale of "Mill Grove" probably ended the joint interests of the elder Audubon and Rozier, for in November, 1806, a new power of attorney[129] was given to the young men by Lieutenant Audubon and his wife; as later events will prove, however, their rights in the property were not completely surrendered with its transfer to Dacosta and his mining company in the autumn of this year. The partners were now free to "choose some kind of serious work," and Ferdinand, who was then twenty-nine, was anxious to make a beginning at once. Since he was not as yet proficient in the English tongue, Rozier engaged as a clerk in the French importing house of Laurence Huron, of Philadelphia, while Audubon, following the advice of his future father-in-law, entered the office of the latter's brother, Benjamin Bakewell, in New York. In the autumn of 1806 Benjamin Bakewell was conducting a successful wholesale importing business at 175 Pearl Street. He then owned several vessels, and his correspondents were scattered over England, France, the West Indies and the Southern States. With him were associated at this time a number of young men, including his nephew, Thomas W. Bakewell, Thomas Pears, a nephew of his wife, Thomas Bakewell, his son, as well as John James Audubon. The hospitable family to which young Audubon was now admitted on terms of intimacy, in accordance with the custom of the day, lived in the rear of the counting-house during the winter months but in summer migrated to the country, the Bakewells going five miles out on the Bloomingdale Road. Benjamin Bakewell had come to this country in 1794, in the same year as the famous chemist, Joseph Priestley, whose friendship he enjoyed and whose religious teachings had drawn both him and his brother, William, from rigid Calvinism to the greater tolerance of the Unitarian belief. At twenty-four he was an independent mercer in Cornhill, London, and was well acquainted in France, where he had spent considerable time during the Revolution, which had destroyed his trade. One of his patrons at this time was Claude François Rozier of Nantes, and inasmuch as the correspondence with him had to be conducted in French, and may possibly in this instance have been due to young Audubon's initiative, it was naturally intrusted to him.