Abraham seems to have become clerk or secretary to the commissioners of the North Level of the Great Level of the Fens ('the Bedford Level') in about 1754, when he was in his early twenties, and was still in post nine years later. The papers catalogued below include his letter book for 1756 and 1757, which shows him writing to officers of the Bedford Level Corporation, to Mr Butcher (a representative of the Duke of Bedford), and to clergymen and farmers, concerning the building of a sluice at Gunthorpe, the tardy payment of taxes, and errors in his accounts, as well as the appointment of a new master for Thorney school, and the ordering of a violin from London.
John Baley apparently began work under his elder brother in 1759 at the age of nineteen. For three and a half years from September 1759 he kept a 'journal of … time and expences', in which he recorded in some detail his various duties in the employ of the North Level commissioners: collecting taxes from the farmers of the Level (which sometimes necessitated visits to fairs and markets at Peterborough, Wisbech, Eye and Crowland, or to a hostelry named the Dog in a Doublet); inspecting and surveying banks, drains and sluices (sometimes in company with Abraham); organising and supervising repair work; making up his accounts; reporting to his brother in Thorney; and attending meetings of the commissioners [4]. The journal is an interesting document, and its interest is increased by Baley's inclusion of entries of apparently limited relevance to his official duties, such as 'waggoning oats' and taking butter to Crowland (both presumably products of the family farm), and carrying his mother and sisters to and from Thorney and elsewhere.