Edward Duplex (1831-1900)
On January 1, 1866, the Black residents of Marysville, California, gathered to celebrate the third anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation. Acting as president of the day’s festivities was a local Black entrepreneur named Edward P. Duplex (circa 1830-1900). Duplex was a local barber who had originally arrived in California from his native Connecticut in 1855. He, like hundreds of other African Americans, arrived in search of their fortunes during the Gold Rush. Black miners in Browns Valley in Yuba County formed several mines including the Rare Ripe Gold and Silver Mining Company (Duplex served on the company’s board of directors). Edward Duplex came from a distinguished family. Prince Duplex (died 1825), his grandfather, was a veteran of the Revolutionary War. Edward’s first cousin, Cortlandt Van Rensselaer Creed (1833-1900), graduated from the Yale School of Medicine in 1857 and was the first Black person known to have graduated from that institution. In the fall of 1879 Duplex was elected a Justice of the Peace in Wheatland in Yuba County. The Grass Valley Morning Union Newspaper reported that Duplex’s victory was “the only instance of a colored man being elected to office by popular vote in this State.” In 1888 Duplex won election as Mayor of Wheatland, becoming the first Black mayor west of the Mississippi. Newspapers at the time recognized Duplex’s ability and hard work noting that, as a Republican, he secured the votes of the Democratic members of Wheatland’s Board of Trustees.
