Edward S. Payton. Yale Yearbook, 1906Born: 1882
Died: June 23, 1912
Edward S. Payton was the younger brother of real estate entrepreneur Philip A. Payton, known as the "Father of Harlem." Edward developed tuberculosis in 1911 and came to cure in Saranac Lake in 1912. He stayed at the Burton Moody Cottage and eventually succumbed to his disease there.
Excerpt from Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem by Kevin McGruder. New York, Columbia University Press, 2021. p 119-120.
In March 1912, as his symptoms continued unabated, Edward Payton traveled to Saranac Lake. By then the town was almost completely devoted to a network of tuberculosis cure cottages. Because of his symptoms, and some understanding of the contagious nature of tuberculosis, Philip and Maggie Payton probably drove Edward on the three-hundred-mile journey through the Adirondacks to Saranac Lake in their automobile, which they had owned since the early years of Philip's success. In Saranac Lake, Edward moved into one of the smallest cure homes, a bungalow (smaller than a cottage) in the village, at 62 Margaret Street. (...) Few African Americans had the means to cease work for months at a time, and fewer had the means to travel to Saranac Lake and rent lodgings for long periods of time as Edward Payton was able to do; therefore there were very few black patients in Saranac Lake. Edward appears to have been one of the first. If his health improved, the color line would have prevented him from cousining with white women living in cure cottages, but Saranac Lake had a small but thriving black community that may have interacted with Edward. The rest cure was not successful for everyone, and unfortunately this was the case for Edward, who died on June 23 in Saranac Lake at the age of twenty-nine.
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