institutions furnished many Negroes of all classes the facilities of
elementary education. Such opportunities were offered at the Baker
Street Baptist Church, the Third Street Baptist 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