Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City (49 page)

But there were certain things the Lorillards did not change. They still relied on Peter Ray’s expertise. They continued to take good care of their workers. Following industry practice, they employed women and children whose small hands were particularly adept at smoothing the tobacco leaf to be placed in troughs. I suppose the Lorillards would have been truly progressive if they had refused to use child labor. But at least they made sure that their employees were well housed, in contrast to the typical tobacco workers who often lived and worked in one single room where, according to one observer, “the tobacco was stored about everywhere, alongside the foul bedding, and in a corner where there were scraps of food.”
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In addition, Lorillard workers had their own
doctor, Leonard Gordon, who was also the company’s chemist. Interested in more than just their physical health, Gordon opened a night school for the 250 children in the company, a sewing school for young women, and a library for all who wished to further their education. The Lorillards’ book collection became the foundation of today’s Jersey City Public Library.

I wondered how the pharmacists in my family had fared in business after the Civil War. Uncertain how to proceed, I turned back to reread each man’s obituary. Emphasizing Peter Guignon’s moral virtues, Crummell had absolutely nothing to say about his old friend’s work as a pharmacist. White’s obituary offered only the vaguest of statements: “Dr. White was also a member of various societies connected with his profession.” Peter W. Ray’s obituary, however, did note that he had been a member of the Kings County Pharmaceutical Society founded in 1877 (as well as its much later teaching arm, the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy). I decided to investigate.

I spent many hours calling historians of American pharmacy around the country, none of whom were much help. Finally, after warning me that I would probably come up empty-handed, one suggested that I browse through the
Druggists’ Reference Register
, an annual credit rating publication of pharmacists, and the monthly
Druggists’ Circular and Chemical Gazette
, one of the field’s most important trade magazines, published in New York but with a national reach. The front section of each issue, he informed me, contained scientific articles on the practice of pharmacy, but the back portion had news items about the country’s many pharmaceutical associations as well as several pages of advertisements.

On a hot summer day, I trudged up to the New York Academy of Medicine on Fifth Avenue, a few blocks north of Mount Sinai hospital. The reading room was dim, musty, and exceedingly hot. A sign alarmingly informed visitors that the library would close once the temperature
reached ninety-nine degrees (air conditioning has since been installed and the thermostat seems fixed at a chilly sixty-nine degrees). The stack attendant brought me twenty years’ worth of large folios of the
Druggists’ Circular
, each about the size of today’s
New York Times
, bound in volumes about two inches thick. They were dusty and dirty and looked as if they hadn’t been touched in more than a hundred years.

But my diligence was rewarded. I never came across Peter W. Ray’s name, but I did find Peter Guignon’s in several reports of meetings of the Kings County Pharmaceutical Society. So he too had been a member of this association, although I don’t know when he was admitted. As stated in its constitution, the society’s goals were networking, development of pharmaceutical knowledge, regulation and enforcement of the practice of pharmacy, and honesty in business. The society was active. Members met monthly to conduct business and listen to erudite papers on different pharmaceutical topics. Most notably, in its early years the society lobbied successfully for the passage of a countywide pharmacy law that would raise the occupation’s standards “from a mere trade to that of a profession.”
²⁵
Those seeking to become practitioners would be required to graduate from a college of pharmacy (hence the eventual founding of the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy) or pass an exam administered by the County Board of Pharmacy.

My efforts to find information about Philip’s professional affiliations were less systematic, and my discoveries totally serendipitous. I had traveled to the Wisconsin Historical Society seeking definite proof that Philip had attended and graduated from the College of Pharmacy of the City of New York. I had found what I was looking for in the March 1844 minutes of the Board of Trustees. But the April and May minutes informed me that while two members of Philip’s class had been proposed and accepted for membership in the college a mere month after graduation, my great-grandfather had not. I assumed that it was case closed, and idly started reading through the printed reports of the college’s Alumni Association stacked chronologically in a folder. The association, it appears, was founded in 1871 with only the vaguest of goals in mind: “the advancement of the interests of the College and of the Profession generally and to bring its Graduates into closer fellowship with each other.” This sounded like a fancy way of saying “networking,”
and I wasn’t sure that the invitation to “closer fellowship” extended to Philip. So I was delighted to see his name on the list of association members in its very first year, and even more thrilled to discover that he was elected second vice president in 1874. Although I was disappointed to find that he never achieved a higher office (president, for example), I decided that second vice president was a significant honor, and certainly much better than exclusion.
²⁶

I had one folder left to look at. That’s where I found a scrap of paper on which the following was written:

The undersigned appointed as a committee on the qualifications of Mr. P. A. White for membership of this College respectfully report that Mr. White is a graduate of this College of the class of 1844—that he has been in business for himself in the “Swamp” since 1845 and in addition has recently been elected a Vice President of the Alumni Association. This leaves no doubt about his qualifications and we therefore cheerfully recommend for election to membership.

On the bottom right of the page were the signatures of George Close and David Hays, and on the bottom left, in parentheses, the single word “elected.” The note was dated March 19, 1874.
²⁷
Philip had become a member of the college even though it had taken him, not two months, but thirty long years!

Armed with this information, I decided to return to the New York Academy of Medicine to take another look at the
Druggists’ Circular
and the
Druggists’ Reference Register.
Here’s how I pieced together my version of events.

By 1870, Philip had made it professionally. Every month from 1870 to 1886, he placed an ad in the
Druggists’ Circular.
The text was always the same:

P. A. WHITE
Wholesale Dealer in Drugs, Chemicals, Perfumery,
Fancy Articles, etc., cor. Gold and Frankfort Sts, N.Y.
Sole proprietor of

CHARLES’ IODINE LINIMENT
Also, Sole Manufacturer of
BADEAU’S STRENGTHENING PLASTER

The ad told me that Philip had added a wholesale department to his retail business. He was no longer advertising ethnic hair products but rather everyday items, a disinfectant cream containing iodine, plaster for making casts for broken bones, stiff backs, and sprained ankles or wrists. In 1871, the
Druggists’ Reference Register
gave Philip a credit rating of B, or “respectable,” which was indeed noteworthy since few druggists received an A rating (superior) and most had to content themselves with a C (limited) or D (credit fair for small amounts).
²⁸

I think a combination of factors enabled my great-grandfather to get this far: methodical procedures, frugality, an uncanny sense of the market, and unofficial networking. My guess is that the men in his profession who knew him personally admired his knowledge and skill and didn’t much care about his race. They wanted him to become a member of the college and, to strengthen his candidacy, got him elected second vice president of the less prestigious Alumni Association.

Membership in the Kings County Pharmaceutical Society and the College of Pharmacy of the City of New York gave Peter and Philip heretofore unheard-of access to professional and even maybe social contacts with their white counterparts. First and foremost among them was Edward Squibb, eminent doctor and pharmacist, who was a member of both Peter’s and Philip’s professional organizations. Squibb began his career as a surgeon with the U.S. Navy, then moved to the Naval Hospital in Brooklyn, where he set up a laboratory to manufacture unadulterated medicines for U.S. seamen and embarked on his lifelong obsession: drug standardization. In 1858, he opened his own laboratory from which he launched a highly successful drug company and taught at the New York College of Pharmacy from 1869 to 1871.

An extraordinary scientist, Squibb possessed a strong sense of ethics in his professional dealings, which must have made him all the more admirable to Philip and Peter. He refused to withhold any of his innovations as professional secrets, shared his working plans with competitors, and rejected patents on any of his inventions. Scrupulously
honest, he was the first to admit a mistake and retract it publicly whatever the cost to his bottom line or reputation. He was dedicated to helping other pharmacists, especially the younger generation, and went out of his way to encourage and mentor them.
²⁹

Although he stood alone at the top, Squibb had many colleagues who had equally high professional and ethical standards, including tolerance in racial matters. Born and trained in Germany, Frederick Charles Chandler taught at the New York College of Pharmacy during the same years as Squibb; I found a photograph of him taken in 1870 standing behind a table of chemical apparatuses with a dark-skinned black student.
³⁰
John Milhau, the trustee who had signed the minutes granting Philip his diploma in 1844, still held membership in the college and attended its monthly meetings until his death in 1874. George Close, the first graduate of the college, a co-founder of the Alumni Association, and one of the two men who pressed for Philip’s election to the college, was also a member of the Kings County Pharmaceutical Society. Not only were these men among the most brilliant pharmaceutical minds of the era, but to all appearances they put scientific knowledge and professional rectitude above race.

Although I don’t have any firm evidence, it seems inevitable that Peter and Philip must have met these men at one or another of the organizations’ gatherings. Maybe Peter was at the July 1880 meeting of the Kings County Pharmaceutical Society when Squibb rebutted a recent accusation that his stock of subnitrate of bismuth contained an excessive amount of arsenic (almost as much as the French!) by explaining how he had reexamined all of his samples and describing in detail his method for removing all traces of the poison. Perhaps Squibb and Close were among those at the June 1882 meeting who “favorably received” Peter’s proposal for “the erection of a Pharmacy Hall in Brooklyn to be owned by the members of the Society and to be kept for their benefit.”
³¹
Or maybe they were present at the March 1884 meeting at which Peter, evidently undamaged by the abortion case of the 1860s, was elected to the society’s Board of Censors, charged with handling cases of unethical behavior.

The same possibilities existed for Philip. Was he in the audience when Squibb delivered a paper on another one of his great inventions:
distilling and obtaining pure acetic acid from wood by heating the wood to just below the temperature of carbonization? If so, he might have been among those who took away as a souvenir a “small billet of wood” that had been subjected to seven days’ distillation in Squibb’s apparatus. Or maybe because New Yorkers loved to mix business and pleasure, Philip attended some of the college or Alumni Association dinners, held regularly at New York’s most fashionable dining spots like Martinelli’s or Delmonico’s. He might have attended the Alumni Association’s annual dinner at Martinelli’s in April 1887, when at the end of the evening “coffee appeared and the smoke of fragrant Havanas began to rise.” Against background music, those assembled first toasted the college before proceeding to honor the venerable George Close by rising and drinking to his health.
³²

If Philip was dedicated to his profession, he remained equally devoted to his church. A second poem pasted on the scrapbook page with his obituary gave me another clue to the importance of St. Philip’s in my great-grandfather’s life. “To Trinity” depicts the parish’s spiritual mother as “an oasis left there by the desert of trade / In a spot that belongs to God,” and invites the visitor to come “through the half-open door and sit down / In an old fashioned pew to dream” and pray.

The racial politics of the national Episcopal Church made it difficult for black worshipers to sit back and dream, however. In matters of religion, Philip and his friends were once again called upon to exercise their “hardy muscle” and fight for racial equality. The status of black parishes nationwide was dismal. It’s true that St. Philip’s had finally gained admission to the New York Diocesan Convention in 1853, and that Philip had been one of the delegation’s members. In the postwar years, this honor was passed on to other family members: Peter Guignon, who
served as delegate from 1877 until the year of his death, followed by Peter Williams Ray and Jerome B. Peterson.

The admission of St. Philip’s to the convention was a clear and open acknowledgment by the New York Diocese that this black church stood on equal footing with all of its parishes. Many other black churches throughout the country never received such recognition, however, especially those in the South. Unlike other denominations, the Episcopal Church did not split along sectional lines during the Civil War and, after the end of hostilities, openly embraced the prewar southern church hierarchy. Essentially, the denomination turned a blind eye to issues of race, allowing dioceses in southern states to continue excluding black parishes from their conventions. Increasingly emboldened, southern bishops conspired to enforce their racial policies at the national level. Meeting in Sewanee, Tennessee, in 1883, they voted to urge the General (national) Convention to establish separate missionary districts for black parishioners that would be placed under the control of individual dioceses. Simply put, the “Sewanee Canon” was the Episcopal version of states’ rights: maintain racial segregation by placing authority in state dioceses rather than in the national body.