Wealthiest Negress Dead Mrs. C.J. Walker, Real Estate Operator, Made Fortune in Few Years Photo: http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/brownhal/qbrown220.jpg FROM:  The New York Times (May 26th 1919) ~ By Staff Mrs. C.J. Walker, known as New York's wealthiest negress, having accumulated a fortune from the sale of so-called anti-kink hair tonic and from real estate investments in the last fourteen years, died yesterday morning at her country estate at Irvington-on-Hudson. She was proprietor of the Madame Walker hair dressing parlor at 108 West 136th Street and other places in the city.  Her death recalled the unusual story of how she rose in twelve years from a washerwoman making only $1.50 a day to a position of wealth and influence among members of her race. Estimates of Mrs. Walker's fortune have run up to $1,000,000.  She said herself two years ago that she was not yet a millionaire, but hoped to be sometime, not that she wanted the money for herself, but for the good she could do with it.  She spent $10,000 every year for the education of young negro men and women in Southern colleges and sent six youths to Tuskegee Institute every year.  She recently gave $5,000 to the National Conference on Lynching. Born fifty-one years ago, she was married at 14, and was left a widow at 20 with a little girl to support.  She worked as a cook, washerwoman, and the like until she reached the age of about 37.  One morning while bending over her wash she suddenly realized that there was no prospect on her meager wage of laying away anything for old age. She had often said that one night shortly afterward she had a dream and something told her to start a hair tonic business, which she did, in Denver, Col., on a capital of $1.25. In a few years she had accumulated a large sum, and invested in real estate in the West and South and in New York State, nearly all the property greatly increasing in value.  She then owned a $50,000 home in the northern part of this city, which some years ago she gave to her daughter, Mrs. Lelia Walker Robinson, associated with her business. In 1917 Madame Walker completed at Irvington, on the banks of the Hudson, a mansion which cost $250,000, and since then had made her home there.  The house, which is one of the show places in the vicinity, is three stories high and consists of thirty or more rooms.  She had installed in this home an $8,000 organ with furnishings, including bronze and marble statuary, cut glass candelabra, tapestries, and paintings, said to be of intrinsic beauty and value.