Pillars of abolitionism and of their communities, but the family home is paved, the Clary name lost
An obituary described Francis Prince Clary as “custodian of the Harvard Chemical Laboratory for nearly his entire adult life”; a “natural musician”; “prominent in Masonry”; and a man who “held the esteem of the entire community.”
Harvard’s Cooke led new chemistry department, but Francis Prince Clary was who made it bubble
Today, Cambridge is a world center of biotechnology and biochemical engineering – but in the 1850s, Harvard was still building what would become one of the most forward-thinking university chemistry departments in the country. Francis Prince Clary was there.
Francis Prince Clary was tireless in his advocacy, and even the music he performed was for equality
No personal writings left behind by Francis Prince Clary tell us his feelings about participating in some of the most important political and moral struggles in this country’s history. But the petitions he signed and events he took part in give a good idea of his zeal for justice.
Francis Prince Clary is the 1800s Black chemist written out of Harvard and Cambridge history
Francis Prince Clary was known by some as a “character” – a person at Harvard but not considered by lore-keepers to be of Harvard. Yet Clary played an unusual and historic role at the university, and off campus he was a well-recognized figure in the Black abolitionist community.
Much of Cambridge’s white entrepreneurial class was financed by this Black ‘laborer’ at Harvard
To give some notion how much trust Cambridge men must have invested in Charles Lenox, then officially just a “laborer” at Harvard, the list of Lenox loan recipients when he died included Sidney Willard, the son of a Harvard president and a man who had held a number of elected offices – including mayor.
Charles Lenox sold pies to Harvard undergrads but had a far greater value to their professors
Wealthy Charles Lenox was identified as a “laborer.” But lending money and charging interest on it – much more than selling pies, blacking boots, or reselling cigar ends and empty bottles – is, properly managed, a way to build a fortune.
How Charles Lenox, Black financier of the 1800s, became a hidden figure in history of Cambridge
Unlike a number of Black contemporaries, Charles Lenox seems not to have appeared in newspaper articles during his lifetime. With his death in 1852, he suddenly hit the news – the fact of a Black man amassing such a fortune being newsworthy enough to make it to New York papers such as the Times and Tribune.
