When people think about early business in Lancaster County, familiar names usually come to mind - merchants, craftsmen, and landowners whose stories have been told for generations.

But buried in old tax rolls, church records, and city registries is another story.

One that rarely makes the history books.

Long before the Civil War - and even before slavery had fully disappeared in Pennsylvania, African Americans in Lancaster were building businesses, learning trades, owning property, and supporting families in a system that was stacked against them.

Their stories are only now being rediscovered.

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Pennsylvania was in a strange in-between period.

Slavery was technically being phased out under the Gradual Abolition Act. But freedom came slowly. Enslaved adults often remained bound for life. Children were forced into decades-long indentured service.

For many African American residents, “freedom” still meant surveillance, registration requirements, and constant economic barriers.

By 1820, free African Americans entering or leaving Lancaster had to register with city officials - or face daily fines.

Every move was monitored.

Every opportunity was harder to reach.

And yet, many still built lives of independence.

Records from the early 1800s reveal a surprising range of Black-owned or Black-operated businesses in Lancaster:

These were not temporary jobs.

They were skilled professions that required training, trust, and reputation.

In a time when racism limited access to capital and customers, building a trade was often the only path to stability.

And many succeeded.

One example is Benjamin Galloway, recorded in 1820 as a glazier living in Musserstown.

He owned his own home.

He had a wife and children.

And traveled to serve clients.

He worked alongside German tradesmen and participated in the same apprenticeship networks that trained white craftsmen.

This wasn’t accidental success.

It was earned - through skill, consistency, and reputation.

Galloway represents a larger truth: Black entrepreneurs in early Lancaster were deeply integrated into the local economy, even when social acceptance lagged behind.

Another figure, James Clendenin, appears in records as both a painter and glazier.

More than that, he ran a household that functioned as a training center.

Young people - some unrelated - lived with him to learn trades under his supervision.

In modern terms, he operated something like a small vocational school inside his home.

Clendenin was respected enough that, in 1817, he was chosen to represent Lancaster’s Black community in negotiations to establish an independent house of worship.

He wasn’t just a businessman.

He was a leader.

Despite legal and financial obstacles, some African Americans in Lancaster managed to acquire property.

Tax records from 1798 list Black residents owning lots on what is now West Strawberry Street and Poplar Street.

One woman, Dinah McIntire, owned multiple properties and left behind an estate that included land, cash, and a home - an extraordinary achievement for the time.

Property ownership meant security.

It meant leverage and a future.

And these early entrepreneurs fought for it.

The Gilmore family offers another powerful example.

Isaac Gilmore worked as a chimney sweep - an essential but dangerous profession in early Lancaster, where chimney fires were a constant threat.

His children were baptized at St. James Episcopal Church and went on to build their own lives in the city.

The family appears repeatedly in historical records over decades.

They laid roots and became a part of Lancaster City’s history.

Because much of Black history was never prioritized in official records.

Newspapers, institutions, and historians often focused on white elites.

Survival didn’t always leave paper trails.

And later generations weren’t always told these stories.

What remains today are fragments - tax lists, church logs, city registries, and rare scholarly studies pieced together like puzzles.

But when assembled, they reveal something powerful.

These early African American entrepreneurs helped build Lancaster’s infrastructure.

They maintained homes.

Supplied goods.

They transported people.

They trained workers.

Protected buildings from fire.

Supported families.

They created small, resilient economic networks long before civil rights protections existed.

Without them, Lancaster would not have grown the way it did.

They were not marginal figures.

They were foundational.

This story isn’t just about the past.

It’s about how opportunity can survive even under pressure.

And how entrepreneurship has always been a form of resistance.

And it’s about recognizing that Lancaster’s success was never built by one group alone.

It was built by people who refused to disappear.

By people who learned trades when they weren’t supposed to.

By people who owned property when they were discouraged from doing so.

By people who built businesses when the system told them not to.

Today, Lancaster celebrates innovation, small business, and entrepreneurship.

That tradition didn’t start recently.

It started more than two centuries ago.

With people like Galloway.

Clendenin.

McIntire.

Gilmore.

And many others whose names we are only beginning to recover.

Their legacy lives on in the streets, buildings, and neighborhoods we still use every day.