Frances was one of 2 women in the pharmacy school in 1916. Rose Freedman was the other. Rose introduced her to her brother Joseph, a young lawyer in Memphis Tennessee. These are the letters that they wrote to each other through their courtship and marriage. They were separated for many years, until their reunion to begin their life together in May, 1919.
Frances was the 1st woman Pharmacist in New York City in Bellevue Hospital. Joseph was a struggling attorney in Memphis, and some of the time, in WWI, was stationed in New York.
Frances opened her drug store, Dixie Drugs, in Memphis when she moved to Tennessee, and proceeded to break ground as a woman and business owner in the early part of the 20th Century
My mother, Jacqueline Freedman Bank was born in 1920.
Sadly, Joseph died in 1929, complications from a beating he received as a result of his lawyering.
Frances, then a single mother, continued to run her drug store and built many apartment/shot gun houses, making them the 1st apartments for "negros" that had heaters and indoor plumbing. (see articles in this portfolio)
These letters reveal a love that endured many years apart. They reveal a woman I, her granddaughter, never really knew.
A woman in love.â