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Nathan Warren Nathan Warren was a remarkable man. He not only survived as a free African American in antebellum Little Rock, he actually prospered. He was a businessman of considerable talent,a religious leader of note,and he had friends among both races in a time when racism ran rampant. Warren was born a slave in Maryland about , probably the son of a white man. He was brought to Little Rock about  as a slave of Whig political leader Robert Crittenden.Crittenden died unexpectedly not long after Warren arrived on the scene, leaving his widow heavily in debt. It is not clear how Warren obtained his freedom, but by  he was free. Free blacks were not common in Arkansas,unlike some areas such as New Orleans. The  U.S. Census recorded  free blacks in the state, with the largest number, , in rural Marion County in the Ozarks near the Missouri border. (The black population in Marion County represented an anomaly, a colony consisting of the extended families of Peter Caulder and David Hall Sr.) Camden, Van Buren, Fort Smith, and Little Rock were centers of free black population, but none had more than twenty-five such individuals in .Despite their small numbers,white residents complained about the presence of free blacks. In  the legislature enacted a law forbidding the entry of free blacks into the state, and those living here were required to file bonds guaranteeing good behavior. Apparently the law of  was not widely enforced, but Nathan Warren was one of those who did post bond. He married a slave of Chester Ashley, a “wily [land] speculator and devious politician,” as one historian described this namesake for Ashley County. Anne Warren came to the marriage with a son,W.A.Rector,who would later become a leader in Reconstruction Little Rock. The late Margaret Ross, in a pioneering article on Nathan Warren, described the free man as having worked as a barber, carriage driver, and general handyman—though his great popularity among the white elite of Little Rock was due to his skills as a confectioner. He was not  the first black confectioner in Little Rock. Indeed, Henry Jackson, another free black man, had earlier operated a confectionery in Little Rock, but he had invented a popular cook stove that took him to Evansville, Indiana, where the stove was manufactured. Warren’s confectionery shop was a two-story frame building on West Markham Street, where the Capital Hotel now stands. Margaret Ross wrote that Warren never wanted for customers and that he was “always called upon to provide the refreshments at weddings and other social events.” His tea cakes were especially popular. Warren used some of his financial resources to join with his free brother,Henry Warren,in purchasing their slave brother,James,whom they manumitted. When his first wife died, Warren married another slave of the Ashley family, Mary Elizabeth. Warren purchased his new wife and her daughter,Ida May.He did not buy his children by his first wife, although Mrs. Ashley manumitted their sickly daughter, Ella. (Ella got the last laugh as she lived to be eighty-five.) Despite his popularity with the city’s elite, or at least their wives, Nathan Warren chaffed from the many roadblocks thrown in his way. When his store caught on fire in ,Warren believed it to be the work of a white arsonist.In Warren took his family to Xenia,Ohio,where the couple later had three children of their own.Sources differ as to how well the Warren family did in the North, but the family moved back to Little Rock soon after it fell to federal troops during the Civil War. Warren opened another confectionary shop,but it was not as popular as before the war. The  census recorded him as a grocer, but within two years he had his own bakery.An organizer of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church at th and Broadway streets in Little Rock,Warren was ordained an elder in .He was also a nd Degree member of the black Masonic Lodge. Nathan Warren died on Sunday, June , . His Masonic funeral filled Bethel Church. Interestingly,Warren was buried at Mount Holly Cemetery, one of the few blacks to be interred in what would later be known as the “Westminster Abbey of Arkansas.” FOR MORE INFORMATION: Ross, Margaret Smith. “Nathan Warren, a Free Negro for the Old South.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly  (Spring ): –.  ENTREPRENEURS ...

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