Early Life and Disownment by Friends Effingham Lawrence was born into the Flushing/Bayside Quaker community of Long Island. As with a number of young Quaker men during the Revolution, he was disowned by the Friends for adopting military dress, wearing a cocked hat and sword.

Druggist and Apothecary In 1781 Lawrence established his druggist’s and apothecary business at 99 Pearl Street. He served as druggist to the Medical Society, whose examining committee visited his shop quarterly and certified that “his drugs were genuine and his medicines faithfully prepared.” The inspection regime reflected the transitional, pre-professional era of American pharmacy, when merchant-apothecaries provided both imported materia medica and house-prepared compounds.

The Tontine Coffee House He was among the sponsors of the Tontine Coffee House, a central node of New York’s commercial life, insurance gossip, and exchange of prices and news. In the sponsor lists he appears simply as a “gentleman,” an unusual designation beside merchants and traders and an early sign of the social standing his probity and success had already earned him.

Jefferson’s Purchase During Thomas Jefferson’s New York sojourn after returning from France in 1790, the Secretary of State purchased red bark (Peruvian bark/quina) and toothbrushes from “Effingham Lawrence, druggist, 227 Queen Street [Pearl Street].” The note captures the everyday realities of elite medical consumption and the expanding availability of personal hygienic goods in the city.

Sale of the Business and Retirement In 1794 Lawrence sold his shop and stock to Jacob Schieffelin (1757–1835) and John Lawrence, part of a wider consolidation of the New York drug trade as wholesale houses grew. Effingham retired to his country place in Flushing, where he died in 1800.

The Quaker Pharmaceutical Trade The Quaker networks that shaped the Lawrence family also shaped the early drug trade. Before the Revolution, English Quaker manufacturers controlled a large share of drug and botanical production; their American co-religionists had privileged access to current methods and supply. New York and Philadelphia wholesale houses sold an expansive range—medicines and botanicals, spices, surgical instruments, medicine chests, and even hardware-store staples like paints and glassware—to physicians, plantations, ships, and retail apothecaries. When wartime embargoes cut American buyers off from England, local druggists accelerated domestic manufacture of chemicals and preparations, a capability that persisted into the new century and elevated firms like Schieffelin & Lawrence.