It was in Cincinnati, however, that the Negroes made most progress in the West.  The migratory blacks came there at times in such large numbers, as we have observed, that they provoked the hostile classes of whites to employ rash measures to exterminate them.  But the Negroes, accustomed to adversity, struggled on, endeavoring through schools and churches to embrace every opportunity to rise.  By 1840 there were 2,255 Negroes in that city.  They had, exclusive of personal effects and $19,000 worth of church property, accumulated $209,000 worth of real estate.  A number of their progressive men had established a real estate firm known as the “Iron Chest” company which built houses for Negroes.  One man, who had once thought it unwise to accumulate wealth from which he might be driven, had, by 1840, changed his mind and purchased $6,000 worth of real estate.

Another Negro paid $5,000 for himself and family and bought a home worth $800 or $1,000.  A freedman, who was a slave until he was twenty-four years of age, then had two lots worth $10,000, paid a tax of $40 and had 320 acres of land in Mercer County.  Another, who was worth only $3,000 in 1836, had seven houses in 1840, 400 acres of land in Indiana, and another tract in Mercer County, Ohio.  He was worth altogether about $12,000 or $15,000.  A woman who was a slave until she was thirty was then worth $2,000.  She had also come into potential possession of two houses on which a white lawyer had given her a mortgage to secure the payment of $2,000 borrowed from this thrifty woman.  Another Negro, who was on the auction block in 1832, had spent $2,600 purchasing himself and family and had bought two brick houses worth $6,000 and 560 acres of land in Mercer County, Ohio, said to be worth $2,500.[30]

The Negroes of Cincinnati had as early as 1820 established schools which developed during the forties into something like a modern system with Gilmore’s High School as a capstone.  By that time they had also not only several churches but had given time and means to the organization and promotion of such as the Sabbath School Youth’s Society, the Total Abstinence Temperance Society and the Anti-Slavery Society.  The worthy example set by the Negroes of this city was a stimulus to noble endeavor and significant achievements of Negroes throughout the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys.  Disarming their enemies of the weapon that they would continue a public charge, they secured the cooperation of a larger number of white people who at first had treated them with contempt.[31]

This unusual progress in the Ohio valley had been promoted by two forces, the development of the steamboat as a factor in transportation and the rise of the Negro mechanic.  Negroes employed on vessels as servants to the travelling public amassed large sums received in the form of tips.  Furthermore, the fortunate few, constituting the stewards of these vessels, could by placing contracts for supplies and using business methods realize handsome incomes.  Many Negroes thus enriched purchased real estate and went into business in towns along the Ohio.