First patient to get a penicillin shot , Harlem's Aaron Leroy Alston , possibly not a widower.

Census information on individuals is always useful but bring along a couple grains of salt.

 A possible case in point is whether or not history's first antibiotics patient, Harlem's Aaron Leroy Alston, was or was not a widower - as reported by his mother on his January 1941 death certificate.

 After all there was no indication he had ever been married let alone widowed on the April 1940 census - where he was simply known as Leroy Alston - the name family and friends called him.

His nephew Claude Jay told me he does not recall any in the extended Glaze family mentioning that Leroy was ever married widowed or separated.

 But the 1930 census tells a different story.

 Born in Rockhill South Carolina in 1910 , Leroy had arrived in Harlem in 1923, an only child, with his mother mother Louise (Glaze) Alston and his father William "Stock" Alston and his cousin Reginald Daniels, about his same age.

They then opened a restaurant at the corner of 8th Avenue and 148th Street.

 By 1930, Aaron and his mother are living in different apartments in Harlem.

 Louise is reported as a widow - and a check of the indexed NYC death certificates does show a death of a William Alston on March 12 1924 , at the very young age of age 36.

 She is described as a waitress working in a tea shop and earning an appallingly low annual income.

 A. Leroy Alston, which was the preferred way that Leroy liked to call himself in print, in 1930 is shown as married to a Charlotte L Alston.

 It indicated both married two years earlier at 18 , on completing High School.

 She is a homemaker and Leroy has a good job - a clerk in a NY Underwriters office ( fire insurance) .

 A check of the indexed death certificates finds no dead Charlotte Alston in all NYC up to the end of 1948 - period.

 Instead in 1940 , the census shows a Charlotte L (L for maiden name Lee ?) Alston, living in Harlem as a daughter to Julia Lee and her age and birth state is the same as indicated in 1930.

 Now it is true that census returns , until recently, almost never used the words separated, deserted , divorced or common law.

 My partner's own father's parents both remarried without getting an (expensive / public) divorce first and continued to live very close to each other in rural Nova Scotia!

 Older family adults probably knew and small children - and the authorites - were never set wise.

 If the couple separated and both returned home to live with mother , it wasn't for lack of jobs during the terrible Great Depression which destroyed so many families in Harlem.

 Leroy kept his good job and worked it a full 52 weeks in 1939.

Many breadwinners then , white and black , had only intermittent work even when employed.

 It is mystery , either way this widowed/married or not issue is finally resolved ....

A. Leroy Alston , noted New York black athlete , was first person in history to get a shot of penicillin - Oct 16 1940 Manhattan

Penicillin histories record the first person ever to receive an antibiotics shot only as Aaron Alston and that is about it.

Aaron himself (along with his family and friends) called himself Leroy.

He signed himself A. Leroy Alston whenever he appeared in the newspapers (which he did fairly frequently) in his role as an outstanding amateur athlete and athletic coach.

His parents Louise (Glaze) Alston and William (known as Stock) Alston came from Georgia and arrived in Harlem in 1923 , with their only child Leroy actually being born in South Carolina in 1910.

His family ran a restaurant on 8th Avenue in Harlem and lived in the Sugar Hill district of Harlem.

He finished high school and worked as a file clerk in a fire insurance company.

On the 1930 census he was married to Charlotte L Alston , about his same age, but she had died by time of the 1940 census - as had his father.

Leroy's real passion was for athletics - a  winning runner at major matches and great in baseball, he was best known for coaching a girls' track and field team ,the Mercury ACs - in fact he fundraised for them and promoted them non stop.

No wonder his doctor Martin Henry Dawson described him  to Ernst Chain, as a patient "in whom he was particularly interested "...