African American business owners made their mark locally in the 1800s

By Sharon McGriff-Payne

Black entrepreneurs in 19th century Solano and surrounding counties,  overcame racial, economic and social barriers to achieve success as business owners.

While most African Americans were relegated to low skilled and poorly paid jobs in the mid to late 1800s, a number of Black men and women in Vallejo, Benicia, Fairfield, Vacaville, Dixon and Napa ran their own businesses.

These early entrepreneurs owned  barbershops,  bath houses, restaurants, blacksmith and wheelwright shops, served as nurses, dressmakers and hairdressers.   Slavery, which ended in 1863, was still a raw memory for many of these men an women who came here from every region in the nation, especially the south.

As early as the 1860s, Bay Area newspapers were touting the North Bay, especially Vallejo, as an excellent locale for African Americans to purchase property and start businesses.

In its February 12, 1869 edition of the San Francisco based The Elevator,  a paper written by and for African Americans,  a writer described Vallejo in glowing terms.

“This is a flourishing little city, its harbor second to none on the coast.  It promises in many ways to vie with San Francisco.  I would advise our friends who are desirous of accumulating wealth to visit this place and secure property or go in business and grow with the city, as it bound to thrive.”

African Americans from all over the nation obviously took heed.  From 1860 on, a number of African Americans  operated  lucrative barbershops in Vallejo, Benicia, Fairfield, Silveyville (later renamed Dixon) and nearby Napa.  During this period in the nation's history, Black barbers held a virtual monopoly in the barber trade.  These business owners served a primarily White clientele. Such business ownership not only allowed African American men a level of independence,  it gave them a prestige within the community that was nearly unprecedented.

In Vallejo, John R. Landeway, Wilson Dixon and G.W. Hawkins owned and operated barbershops in downtown Vallejo.  According to the 1870 Vallejo city directory, Landeway's shop was at 170 Georgia Street.   Dixon operated a  shop on Santa Clara Street between Georgia and Virginia streets.   At one point Hawkins owned a shop on Georgia Street and later moved his business to a hotel in South Vallejo. A number of African American men had their own bootblack stands.  While these jobs were not as prestigious as barbering, these men were business owners all the same.

Like many African American business owners of the day, Landeway and Dixon were prominent in local and statewide organizations aimed at improving the educational, political and economic lot of the state's Black residents.  Both men served on a statewide education committee that sought parity for Black school children who, for many years, were denied education in the state's public school system.

Landeway and Dixon also served on a Bay Area committees to commemorate the passage of the Emancipation  Proclamation.  Landeway was also a member of the “Grant Invincibles, ” a political organization that worked to get Ulysses S. Grant re-elected to the presidency in the early 1870s.

In Benicia, George Williams owned a barber shop on First Street, between D and E streets.  Edward Hutton owned a successful barber shop in Dixon, that earned a hefty $3,000 a year.

In nearby Napa, Joseph S. Hatton and his father, Edward,  ran barbershops on Main Street. The Hattons were prominent in African American leadership circles in the North Bay.  Both men served as agents for The Elevator and the Pacific Appeal.  William Christopher also owned a barbershop on Napa's Main Street. Christopher served as a newspaper agent for The Elevator,  and in 1865 was a delegate to the California State Convention of Colored Citizens in Sacramento. Frederick Sparrow was yet another Napa barber who operated his own shop. Sparrow had the distinction of being the first African Americans man in the North Bay to register to vote following the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870.

Local African Americans also went into the restaurant business as a means of earning a living.  In Vallejo, in the early 1870s, The Elevator newspaper criticized an African American restaurant owner for serving a Black patron in the kitchen, rather than the dining area where the restaurant's White diners ate.

In the late 1800s, Dixon's  Nancy Geary, dubbed the “Ice Cream Lady” by local townspeople, operating  an ice cream parlor at the Mayes Building.  The popular shop eventually turned into a restaurant.  A September 2, 1898 Dixon newspaper noted that “Mrs. Nancy Geary is prepared  to furnish a wholesome meal at the corner of First Street and will treat her patrons well.”  In Vacaville, Will Stepp owned and operated the Starr Restaurant.

In Napa, William Bailey earned a living as a blacksmith, owning his own business. In Suisun, Clayton Jones ran a wheelwright shop, building horse carriages, wagons and repairing wagon wheels for area residents.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Vallejo could boast an African American chiropodist (or foot doctor) who served the larger community.  According to Delilah Beasley's The Negro Trail Blazers of California, Dr. Rodgers (his first name not was given) came to California in 1863 from the West Indies after being “connected wit the Navy.”  Beasley wrote that Rodgers learned his profession at his home in the West Indies, “where the schools teaches both the trades and the professions.”

This article originally published in the Solano County Black Chamber of Commerce newsletter, Spirit of Commerce, www.scbcc.org