Negro per capita ownership of property compared most favorably with that of the white people.  Altogether the Negroes owned $800,000 worth of property in the city and $5,000,000 worth in the state.  In the city there were among other workers three bank tellers, a landscape artist who had visited Rome to complete his education, and nine daguerreotypists, one of whom was the best in the entire West.[2] Of 1696 Negroes at work in Philadelphia in 1856, some of the more important occupations numbered workers as follows:  tailors, dressmakers, and shirtmakers, 615; barbers, 248; shoemakers, 66; brickmakers, 53; carpenters, 49; milliners, 45; tanners, 24; cake-bakers, pastry-cooks, or confectioners, 22; blacksmiths, 22.  There were also 15 musicians or music-teachers, 6 physicians, and 16 school-teachers.[3] The foremost and the most wealthy man of business of the race in the country about 1850 was Stephen Smith, of the firm of Smith and Whipper, of Columbia, Pa.[4] He and his partner were lumber merchants.  Smith was a man of wide interests.  He invested his capital judiciously, engaging in real estate and spending much of his time in Philadelphia, where he owned more than fifty brick houses, while Whipper, a relative, attended to the business of the firm.  Together these men gave employment to a large number of persons.  Of similar quality was Samuel T. Wilcox, of Cincinnati, the owner of a large grocery business who also engaged in real estate.  Henry Boyd, of Cincinnati, was the proprietor of a bedstead manufactory that filled numerous orders from the South and West and that sometimes employed as many as twenty-five men, half of whom were white.  Sometimes through an humble occupation a Negro rose to competence; thus one of the eighteen hucksters in Cincinnati became the owner of $20,000 worth of property.  Here and there several caterers and tailors became known as having the best places in their line of business in their respective towns.  John Julius, of Pittsburgh, was the proprietor of a brilliant place known as Concert Hall.  When President-elect William Henry Harrison in 1840 visited the city it was here that his chief reception was held.  Cordovell became widely known as the name of the leading tailor and originator of fashions in New Orleans.  After several years of success in business this merchant removed to France, where he enjoyed the fortune that he had accumulated.

[Footnote 1:  Clarke:  Condition of the Free Colored People of the United States.]

[Footnote 2:  Nell, 285.]

[Footnote 3:  Bacon:  Statistics, 13.]

[Footnote 4:  Delany.]