The Journal of Negro History | Page 9

Church, the Colored
Christian Church, the New Street Methodist Church, and the African
Methodist Church. Among the preachers then promoting this cause
were John Warren, Rufus Conrad, Henry Simpson, and Wallace
Shelton. Many of the old citizens of Cincinnati often refer with pride to
the valuable services rendered by these leaders.
In things economic the Negroes were exceptionally prosperous after the
forties. Cincinnati had then become a noted pork-packing and
manufacturing center. The increasing canal and river traffic and finally

the rise of the railroad system tended to make it thrive more than ever.
Many colored men grew up with the city. A Negro had in the East End
on Calvert Street a large cooperage establishment which made barrels
for the packers. Knight and Bell were successful contractors noted for
their skill and integrity and employed by the best white people of the
city. Robert Harlan made considerable money buying and selling race
horses. Thompson Cooley had a successful pickling establishment. On
Broadway A. V. Thompson, a colored tailor, conducted a thriving
business. J. Pressley and Thomas Ball were the well-known
photographers of the city, established in a handsomely furnished
modern gallery which was patronized by some of the wealthiest people.
Samuel T. Wilcox, who owed his success to his position as a steward
on an Ohio River line, thereafter went into the grocery business and
built up such a large trade among the aristocratic families that he
accumulated $59,000 worth of property by 1859.[60]
A more useful Negro had for years been toiling upward in this city.
This man was Henry Boyd, a Kentucky freedman, who had helped to
overcome the prejudice against colored mechanics in that city by
exhibiting the highest efficiency. He patented a corded bed which
became very popular, especially in the Southwest. With this article he
built up a creditable manufacturing business, employing from 18 to 25
white and colored men.[61] He was, therefore, known as one of the
desirable men of the city. Two things, however, seemingly interfered
with his business. In the first place, certain white men, who became
jealous of his success, burned him out and the insurance companies
refused to carry him any longer. Moreover, having to do chiefly with
white men he was charged by his people with favoring the
miscegenation of races. Whether or not this was well founded is not yet
known, but his children and grandchildren did marry whites and were
lost in the so-called superior race.
A much more interesting Negro appeared in Cincinnati, however, in
1847. This was Robert Gordon, formerly the slave of a rich yachtsman
of Richmond, Virginia. His master turned over to him a coal yard
which he handled so faithfully that his owner gave him all of the slack
resulting from the handling of the coal. This he sold to the local
manufacturers and blacksmiths of the city, accumulating thereby in the
course of time thousands of dollars. He purchased himself in 1846 and

set out for free soil. He went first to Philadelphia and then to
Newburyport, but finding that these places did not suit him, he
proceeded to Cincinnati. He arrived there with $15,000, some of which
he immediately invested in the coal business in which he had already
achieved marked success. He employed bookkeepers, had his own
wagons, built his own docks on the river, and bought coal by
barges.[62]
Unwilling to see this Negro do so well, the white coal dealers
endeavored to force him out of the business by lowering the price to the
extent that he could not afford to sell. They did not know of his acumen
and the large amount of capital at his disposal. He sent to the coal yards
of his competitors mulattoes who could pass for white, using them to
fill his current orders from his foes' supplies that he might save his own
coal for the convenient day. In the course of a few months the river and
all the canals by which coal was brought to Cincinnati froze up and
remained so until spring. Gordon was then able to dispose of his coal at
a higher price than it had ever been sold in that city. This so increased
his wealth and added to his reputation that no one thereafter thought of
opposing him.
Gordon continued in the coal business until 1865 when he retired.
During the Civil War he invested his money in United States bonds.
When these bonds were called in, he invested in real estate on Walnut
Hills, which he held until his death in 1884. This estate descended to
his daughter Virginia Ann Gordon who married George H. Jackson, a
descendant of slaves in the Custis family of Arlington, Virginia. Mr.
Jackson is now a resident of Chicago and is managing this estate.[63]
Having lived through