tions which
forbade the sale of great quantities of "boiled corn, peaches, pears,
apples, and other kinds of fruit." These wares were bought and sold
not only in houses and outhouses but in the public streets. The Common
Council in 1740 declared the same to be a nuisance and prohibited it
with a penalty of public whipping. The Council gave as one of its
reasons that it was productive of "many dangerous fevers and other
distempers and diseases in the inhabitants in the same city," but
those coming to market by order of their masters were excepted from
the prohibition. The effect of the latter traffic upon the health of
the city was purposely not discerned.[70] The act of 1726 was again
re-enacted in 1788.[71] From time to time faithful slaves of the West
India Company were set free. These usually began tilling the soil for
themselves and probably marketed their products in the town.

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