ng business, buying by contract droves of cattle to supply the
various military posts of the United States.[22] Mr. Henry M. Collins, who
started life as a boatman, left this position for speculation in real
estate in Pittsburgh where he established himself as an asset of the
community and accumulated considerable wealth.[23] Owen A. Barrett, of the
same city, made his way by discovering the remedy known as _B.A.
Fahnestock's Celebrated Vermifuge_, for which he was retained in the
employ of the proprietor, who exploited the remedy.[24] Mr. John Julius
made himself indispensable to Pittsburgh by running the Concert Hall Cafe
where he served President William Henry Harrison in 1840.[25]

The field of greatest achievement, however, was not in the conservative
East where the people had well established their going toward an
enlightened and sympathetic aristocracy of talent and wealth. It was in
the West where men were in position to establish themselves anew and make
of life what they would. These crude communities, to be sure, often
objected to the presence of the Negroes and sometimes drove them out. But,
on the other hand, not a few of those centers in the making were in the
hands of the Quakers and other philanthropic persons who gave the Negroes
a chance to grow up with the community, when they exhibited a capacity
which justified philanthropic efforts in their behalf.

These favorable conditions obtained especially in the towns along the Ohio
river, where so many fugitives and free persons of color stopped on their
way from slavery to freedom. In Steubenville a number of Negroes had by
their industry and good deportment made themselves helpful to the
community. Stephen Mulber who had been in that town for thirty years was
in 1835 the leader of a group of thrifty free persons of color. He had a
brick dwelling, in which he lived, and other property in the city. He made
his living as a master mechanic employing a force of workmen to meet the
increasing demand for his labor.[26] In Gallipolis, there was another
group of this class of Negroes, who had permanently attached themselves to
the town by the acquisition of property. They were then able not only to
provide for their families but were maintaining also a school and a
church.[27] In Portsmouth, Ohio, despite the "Black Friday" upheaval of
1831, the Negroes settled down to the solution of the problems of their
new environment and later showed in the accumulation of pro