In 1869, Lilly left Indiana to open a drugstore with James W. Binford, his business partner. Binford and Lilly opened The Red Front Drugstore in Paris, Illinois, in August 1869. In November 1869, Colonel Lilly married Maria Cynthia Sloan. Soon after their marriage they sent for his son, Josiah, who was still living in Greencastle, to join them in Illinois. Eli and Maria's only child, a daughter named Eleanor, was born on January 25, 1871, and died of diphtheria in 1884 at the age of thirteen. Maria died in 1932. Although the business in Illinois was profitable and allowed Lilly to save money, he was more interested in medicinal manufacturing than running a pharmacy. Lilly began formulating a plan to create a medicinal wholesale company of his own. Lilly left the partnership with Binford in 1873 to return to Indianapolis, where, on January 1, 1874, he and John F. Johnston opened a drug manufacturing operation called Johnston and Lilly. Three years later, on March 27, 1876, Lilly dissolved the partnership. His share of the assets amounted to an estimated $400 in merchandise (several pieces of equipment and a few gallons of unmixed chemicals) and about $1,000 in cash. When Lilly approached Augustus Keifer, a wholesale druggist and family friend, for a job, Keifer encouraged Lilly to established his own drug manufacturing business in Indianapolis. Keifer and two associated drugstores agreed to purchase their drugs from Lilly at a cost lower than they were currently paying. Eli Lilly and Company founder On May 10, 1876, Lilly opened his own laboratory in a rented two-story building (now demolished) at 15 West Pearl Street and began to manufacture drugs. The sign for the business said "Eli Lilly, Chemist". Lilly's manufacturing venture began with $1,400 ($ in 2020 chained dollars) in working capital and three employees: Albert Hall (chief compounder), Caroline Kruger (bottler and product finisher), and Lilly's fourteen-year-old son, Josiah, who had quit school to work with his father as an apprentice. Lilly's first innovation was gelatin-coated pills and capsules. Other early innovations included fruit flavorings and sugarcoated pills, which made medicines easier to swallow. Following his experience with the low-quality medicines used in the Civil War, Lilly committed himself to producing only high-quality prescription drugs, in contrast to the common and often ineffective patent medicines of the day. One of the first medicines he began to produce was quinine, a drug used