Edward Duplex

Duplex used his share of profits from the mine to start his own barbershop in Marysville, California, where he employed other Black barbers.

[1] His father, Prince Duplex Jr., worked as a steward on the New Haven Steamship Line which ran between Long Island and New York City.

[5] After the death of his father, Adaline was briefly married a second time to a man named Whiting, and raised Edward's older brother Elisha and his sister Adeline Frances.

[7][8][9] Despite the Black testimony exclusion law which had passed in California in 1851, Duplex was allowed to testify in court against a white assailant who was convicted of robbery in 1853.

[2] In 1859, The Daily National Democrat reported that Duplex had constructed a row of fans, powered by a steam engine, above the chairs at the Metropolitan Barber Shop.

[2] Duplex was active in the Mount Olive Baptist Church in Marysville,[1] and was a Freemason, belonging to the Prince Hall Masonic Lodge.

[15] From the 1850s through the 1870s, Duplex was a leader in the Colored Conventions Movement in California,[12] traveling long distances to attend every meeting in Sacramento and San Francisco.

[2] The petition listed the names of 240 California Blacks requesting funding to cover the cost of leaving the United States.

[2] Historian Rudolph Lapp argues that the petition was a symbolic protest against the narrow objectives of the Civil War prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, rather than a genuine request.