Early Life
James Black was born in Hackensack, New Jersey on 1 May 1800. James' mother died when he was very young and he had difficulty getting along with his stepmother. Black ran away from home to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at age 8 and was apprenticed to a silversmith. At age 18 he migrated westward and took jobs on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. About 1820 Black spent some time at Bayou Sara in Louisiana working as a ferryman and as a steamboat deckhand on the Red River which took him upstream to Fulton, Arkansas. Black left the boat and settled at a crossroads 14 miles northeast of Fulton that would later become Washington, Arkansas and Black's permanent home.
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