A 1906 article in the New York Age, recalling the earlier period, said that James Weeks, a stevedore and a respected member of the community, "owned a handsome dwelling at Schenectady and Atlantic Avenues." Weeksville became home to ministers, teachers and other professionals, including the first female African-American physician in New York state, and the first African-American police officer in New York City. The black community in Weeksville developed its own churches, a school, an orphanage, a cemetery, an old age home, an African-American benevolent society, and one of the first African-American newspapers, the Freedman's Torchlight.