Slaves, therefore, had little or no opportunity to share in the trading operations of the Colony. State emancipation by the acts of 1799, 1817, and 1827, however, was finally secured, and with the coming of this boon there was liberty to engage in the traffic of the growing metropolis. There is conclusive evidence that considerable numbers of Negroes did embrace the opportunity.
The volumes of the Colored American from 1838 to 1841 contain a number of advertisements and references to business enterprises run by Negroes. The newspaper itself was a considerable undertaking and job printing was also "executed with dispatch." In 1837, George Pell and John Alexander opened a restaurant in the one-hundred block in Church Street.
In 1838, there were two boarding houses in this same block, and two boarding houses in Leonard Street and one each in Spruce and Franklin and Lispenard Streets. The next year two other boarding houses were started, one on South Pearl Street and the other near the beginning of Cross Street, and in 1840 two more entered the list, on Sullivan and Church Streets. The drug store of Dr. Samuel McCune Smith and the cleaning and dyeing establishment of Bennet Johnson, both in the one-hundred block on Broadway, were well known and successful enterprises of the day.
B. Bowen and James Green both had small stores for dry goods and notions in 1838, the former on Walker Street and the latter on Anthony. While the same year a hair-dressing establishment on Leonard Street, a coal-yard on Duane Street, a pleasure garden on Thomas Street and three tailors, whose location could not be ascertained, were enterprises of promise.
In 1839 and 1840, there were a pleasure garden and saloon in Anthony Street and a similar establishment on King Street, with an "Amusement House" on Spring Street, and near it Brown and Wood ran a confectionary and fruit store. Richard Carroll ran a bathing establishment in Church Street. A coal-yard in Pearl Street, a watch and clock maker, three private schools, and a "dry-goods store of the female Trading Association," complete the list of firms that was contained in the record of the period.
A number of these enterprises are known to have continued for a number of years after 1840. Testimony of witnesses[72] as late as the time of the Civil War shows that a number of the above-named enterprises were in existence as late as 1860.