Penyan, Western New York, William Platt and Joseph C. Cassey were
successful lumber merchants.[13] Mr. W.H. Topp of Albany was for several
years one of the leading merchant tailors of that city.[14] Henry Scott,
of New York City, developed a successful pickling business, supplying most
of the vessels entering that port.[15] Thomas Downing for thirty years ran
a creditable restaurant in the midst of the Wall Street banks, where he
made a fortune.[16] Edward V. Clark conducted a thriving business,
handling jewelry and silverware.[17] The Negroes as a whole, moreover, had
shown progress. Aided by the Government and philanthropic white people,
they had before the Civil War a school system with primary, intermediate
and grammar schools and a normal department. They then had considerable
property, several churches and some benevolent institutions.

In Southern Pennsylvania, nearer to the border between the slave and free
States, the effects of the achievements of these Negroes were more
apparent for the reason that in these urban centers there were sufficient
Negroes for one to be helpful to the other. Philadelphia presented then
the most striking example of the remaking of these people. Here the
handicap of the foreign element was greatest, especially after 1830. The
Philadelphia Negro, moreover, was further impeded in his progress by the
presence of southerners who made Philadelphia their home, and still more
by the prejudice of those Philadelphia merchants who, sustaining such
close relations to the South, hated the Negro and the abolitionists who
antagonized their customers.

In spite of these untoward circumstances, however, the Negroes of
Philadelphia achieved success. Negroes who had formerly been able to toil
upward were still restricted but they had learned to make opportunities.
In 1832 the Philadelphia blacks had $350,000 of taxable property, $359,626
in 1837 and $400,000 in 1847. These Negroes had 16 churches and 100