[2] Trower was among the wealthiest African Americans in Pennsylvania and possibly the United States at the time of his death.

At that time, the tide of immigration had already set in from the Virginia plantations toward the cities and young Trower drifted with it in the direction of Baltimore.

There was $52 surplus after the farm was paid for and with this sum Trower, wholly inexperienced in the difficulties and dangers of city life, landed in Baltimore.

[3] Trower was fortunate there in meeting the Mack family, with whom he made his home during the larger part of the time that he was in Baltimore.

[3] Trower decided to settle in Germantown, one of the more wealthy and prosperous quarters of the city, and with the little capital that he had gotten together, he opened a restaurant.

He won the favor of the fashionable people of Germantown and his increasing trade forced him rapidly into a larger and more lucrative business.

Trower had succeeded in winning the goodwill of some of the wealthy citizens and, with their encouragement, he purchased and refitted the Savings Fund building and made out of it, at a cost of $25,000, a first-class caterer's establishment.

It was at this time that he made the acquaintance and won the goodwill of some of the officers of William Cramp & Sons, a shipbuilding company.

Many of the world's most renowned war vessels were served upon their trial trips by Trower, among them the Yorktown, the Philadelphia, the Vesuvius, the New York, the Iowa, the Columbia, the Baltimore, the Minneapolis, the Newark, the Brooklyn, the Variag, the Retvizan, the Mecidiye, the Colorado and the Pennsylvania.

A large element of Trower's success must be attributed to the fact that he constantly sought to improve and extend his business.

His reputed wealth of approximately $1 million placed him among the richest African Americans in Pennsylvania and possibly the United States.