Philo Carpenter

Philo Carpenter (February 27, 1805 – August 7, 1886) was Chicago, Illinois' first pharmacist, and an outspoken abolitionist.

Biography Born in Savoy, Massachusetts, February 27, 1805, young Philo learned medicine and the pharmaceutical trade in Troy, New York in the drugstore of Amatus Robins. He eventually gained a half interest in the business. There he married Sarah Bridges in May 1830, but she died that November.

Joining the Presbyterian Church, in Troy, he gained an interest in missionary work. They had seven children together.

Philo and Ann Carpenter's arrival in Chicago was a small turning point in the area's history, because they came into town in a fancy carriage. This was the first pleasure vehicle to arrive in Chicago, and the Carpenters' trip in such a carriage demonstrated that the area was safe from Indian attacks.

Carpenter invested heavily in real estate in the area surrounding what is now LaSalle Street and Wacker Drive, but the Panic of 1837 wiped him out, and his creditors took all of the land he had purchased. The area would be worth over $200 million today.

His pharmaceutical business soon allowed him to become financially solvent again. A religious man, he organized the Home Sunday School of the First Presbyterian Church. He was an elder in this church until the Civil War, when members of the congregation split over whether to support the North or the South.

He ran for mayor of Chicago twice on the Liberty Party ticket, losing to John Putnam Chapin in 1846, and to James Curtiss in 1847.

Carpenter served as a member of the Chicago Board of Education.

Legacy The first school to bear his name was built in 1868 on the same site, to the east of the present school which opened in 1957.