Louise Clegget (Anna Louise) James

Anna Louise James was born in Hartford, Conn., on January 19, 1886, the ninth child of Anna Houston and Willis Samuel James. Her father had escaped to Hartford from a plantation in Virginia at the age of 16. The name recorded on ALJ's birth certificate is Louise Clegget James. Anna Houston James died in 1894, leaving WSJ to raise his eight surviving children with the help of relatives. ALJ graduated from Arsenal Elementary School (Hartford) in 1902 and Saybrook (Conn.) High School in 1905. Following something of a family tradition, she decided to become a pharmacist, graduating from the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy in 1908, and in 1909 becoming the first African American woman licensed pharmacist in Connecticut.

ALJ ran her own drug store in Hartford from 1909 until 1911, when she moved to Old Saybrook to join her brother-in-law, Peter Lane, at the pharmacy he had opened there in about 1900. When PL left (ca.1917), ALJ bought his half of the business and ran James Pharmacy until her retirement in 1967. She lived in an apartment above the pharmacy. An historical marker indicates that the building once housed a shop in which Lafayette made a purchase.

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