Anna Louise James was born in Hartford, Conn., to Anna Houston and Willis Samuel James. The name recorded on James's birth certificate is Louise Clegget James. She graduated from Arsenal Elementary School (Hartford) in 1902 and Saybrook (Conn.) High School in 1905. She graduated from the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy in 1908, and in 1909 became the first African American woman licensed pharmacist in Connecticut. James 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 Lane left (ca.1917), James bought his half of the business and ran James Pharmacy until her retirement in 1967. She lived in an apartment above the pharmacy. Active in Republican Party politics, she was one of the first women in Old Saybrook to register to vote after the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. James died in Old Saybrook on December 12, 1977.
James's sister, Helen "Lou" Evelyn James Chisholm, attended college briefly, then lived in Hawaii, teaching at an orphanage in 1903. She returned to the U.S. the following year, and attended Atlanta University, where she was a student of W.E.B. Du Bois. Their sister Bertha married Peter Lane; their daughter is Ann Lane Petry, a well-known writer.
From the description of Papers, 1874-1991 (inclusive). (Harvard University). WorldCat record id: 122583587
