Bethel Burying Ground Project

Seventy-two-year-old Ann Richards died this date, February 5th, in 1848 of Inflammation of the Lungs and was buried at Bethel Burying Ground. According to census records and city directories, Ms. Richards was a single woman. The death certificate identifies her as ‘Mrs.,’ which likely means she was a widow. The 1847 Philadelphia African American Census reports that she resided alone at #8 Gray’s Alley in a 9’x9′ room for which she paid $2.33 a month. She was self-employed as a laundress for which she may have made from $0.75-$1.00 a week when she was able to get the work. Ms. Richards reported that she was not born in Pennsylvania and that she could read. She belonged to a beneficial society and attended Bethel A.M.E. at 6th and Lombard Streets.

The red circle in the above map illustrates the location of Mrs. Richards’ home at #8 Gray’s Alley. The red arrow in the map below shows the location of the address in relation to the Delaware River (blue line). In the mid-1850s, Gray’s Alley was renamed Gatzmer Alley.

There were two large tenements in Gray’s Alley that contained all the African Africans on the block, according to the 1847 Philadelphia African American Census. The two buildings contained sixty-eight Black men, women, and children. The men in Gray’s Alley worked as laborers and porters, likely on the nearby wharves loading and unloading ships. The women were self-employed as wash women and domestics. There was one woman who listed her occupation as a “cake and pie maker.” She may have sold her baked goods at the nearby outdoor market, just around the corner.

Tenement Life

Ms. Richards died on a day in early February where it snowed 2 1/2 inches “but most of it melted on reaching the ground.” She was buried at Bethel Burying Ground.

Note: The death certificate for Ms. Richards was signed by “George Webber, M.D.” However, the city directories listed him as a botanical and herb physician. He resided very close to Ms. Richard’s home.

Seventy-four-year-old Jane Ginn died this date, January 25th, in 1849 of “Cramp Cholic” and was buried at Bethel Burying Ground. Mr. Jacob S. Haas was not a physician. He was a Whig Party hack that was given the political patronage job of coroner for which he was completely unqualified. Haas was a liquor supplier and a  victualler, which was traditionally a person who supplies food, beverages and other provisions for the crew of a vessel at sea.  He was relieved later in the year of his coroner job because of supposed ill-health. (1)

According to the 1847 Philadelphia African American Census, Ms. Ginn was self-employed as a laundress who also did ironing. The highly acclaimed historian of African American History, Carter Woodson observed, “Without a doubt, many a Negro family in the free states would have been reduced to utter destitution had it not been for the labor of the mother as a washwoman.”(1) In the year that Ms. Ginn died, there were 4,249 Black women employed in Philadelphia. Out of that number, there were 1,970 who reported to census takers that they earned a living by taking in washing and/or ironing. (2)

 The 1847 Census shows that Ms. Ginn was a single woman, likely a widow (3), and resided with a woman who was over 50 years of age. The census taker reported that this woman was “intemperate.” The two women received some sort of public aid, like firewood. Ms. Ginn attended church services, probably Bethel A.M.E., and was a member of a beneficial society that, presumably, paid for her funeral expenses. 

The red arrow on the above map illustrates the location of Ms. Ginn’s home on Baker Street, now known as Pemberton Street. The red circle indicates the location of the Bethel Burying Ground.

 Ms. Ginn resided on Baker Street in South Philadelphia. She lived in a shack, that probably had been a horse stable or pigpen, located behind a shanty that faced Baker Street – hell on earth. This two-block long thoroughfare was cogged with “mud and filth” and was the epicenter in the county for deadly contagious diseases and deaths from poisonous alcohol. The numbers are absolutely stunning. In October of 1847, nine deaths were reported from alcohol, exposure, and neglect. In addition, there were six deaths from Typhus and Typhoid Fever. Incredibly, for the first ten months in 1847, there were a total of 132 deaths on Baker Street, including 68 children on this two-block hell hole. No one chooses to live like this. (4)

In November of 1847, the Philadelphia Board of Health started moving people out of their homes on Baker Street and boarding up the structures. They left the sick people in their homes because they didn’t want them to contaminant others. It was inconceivable that they left two Black women in their shanty who were suffering from fever but had “a fair prospect of recovery.” Could that have been Ms. Ginn and her roommate? (5)

Moyamensing Hall where Nelson Barrington ran for protection.

In 1846, Ms. Ginn may have been one of the one hundred “wretched creatures,” mostly Black women, avenging a Black woman who was a victim of horrible spousal abuse. Nelson Barrington, a Black man, sold his wife and baby to a fugitive slave catcher from Delaware. The mother and child were put into Moyamensing jail, awaiting a hearing. A group of enraged Black women attacked Barrington in his home on Baker Street, very near Ms. Ginn’s home. They attacked with stones and other weapons with the intent of killing him. Barrington escaped and ran to a local municipal building, Moyamensing Hall, where the constables protected him. The crowd surrounded the Hall for a day until they were dispersed. They were no further newspaper accounts of the abuse victim. (6)

Jane Ginn died on a clear, warm winter day in late January where the temperature at sunrise was 42° and rose to 58° by late afternoon. Ms. Ginn was buried at Bethel Burying Ground.

NOTES

(1) John S. Haas . . . Philadelphia Inquirer, 25 June 1849, p. 1.
(2) The Negro Wage Earner by Lorenzo Garner and Carter Woodson, p. 4.
(3) Deaths on Baker Street . . . Public Ledger, 8 Nov 1847, p.2.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ibid.
(6) 100 Black women . . . Sun, 25 April 1846, p. 2.

Forty-seven-year-old James Champion died on December 6th, in 1818, of Tuberculosis and eventually was buried at Bethel Burying Ground in early January of 1819. The reason for this delay was a long stretch of below-freezing temperatures that completely froze over the Delaware River, according to newspaper accounts. (1)

Large cemeteries usually had vaults where they stored bodies in situations like this. Bethel did not have a vault. It was possible to rent space in a vault in a nearby cemetery. It was also a possibility that he was temporarily buried “between the walls” which meant a corpse was buried underneath the floor of the church. (2) But whatever the situation, Mr. Champion’s remains were removed and interred at Bethel Burying Ground in early January of 1819, as described by the above document.

The red arrow illustrates the location of Mr. Champion’s home at 12 Elizabeth Street, later called Barclay Street. The red circle illustrates the close proximity of Bethel AME Church.

Tragically, there is little personal information available on Mr. Champion or his family. Philadelphia city directories record his occupation as “carter” until 1813 when he is listed as a “master chimney sweep.” A carter is an operator of a wagon or cart that transports goods. Elizabeth Street was the location of several large businesses, including the cordial distillery of J. Dickerson and the chocolate manufactory of Frederick Shonnard. Mr. Champion could have been employed at either one of these. 

James Champion was an original trustee of Bethel Church along with its founder, the Rev. Richard Allen. Champion was an early Allenite or devoted follower of Allen. To give an example of Mr. Champion’s status in the church, we only have to look at an event on December 19th in 1805. A beloved Bethel congregate and an old member of St. George’s Methodist Church, Charles Boston, died and was buried on this date. There was a large funeral at Bethel where the white Methodist clergy followed the coffin in the procession to Mr. Boston’s grave. The only ones allowed to lead the coffin were Rev. Richard Allen, Rev. Absalom Jones, and James Champion! (1)

James Champion was one of the Bethel Church trustees that signed (by power of attorney) the sale agreement for the land that would become the Bethel Burying Ground in April of 1810.

In the same year as his death, while he was suffering from Tuberculosis, Mr. Champion finished a hymn book of 314 hymns for his church with Rev. Allen and Daniel Coker. (2)

(1) A Journal of the Travels of William Colbert . . . (1790-1833). 

(2) The quadrennial address of the bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, p. 16.

Eighty-three-year-old Abraham Hall died this date, January 8th, in 1841 of “old age” and was buried at Bethel Burying Ground.

“S. Gibbs” was Shepherd Gibbs, Bethel AME Church’s sexton and cemetery manager.

According to the 1837 Philadelphia African American Census, Mr. Hall worked as a laborer. His spouse worked in the home. There were seven total individuals in the household and all were not native to Pennsylvania. Mr. Hall reported that he was formerly enslaved and that he bought his freedom for two hundred fifty dollars. He also purchased the freedom of his son for fifty-dollars. 

The red star illustrates the location of Mr. Hall’s home. The yellow star indicates the local of the State House, now known as Independence Hall.

The Hall family of seven lived in one room at 114 South 6th Street, across the street from what we now know as Independence Hall. For this, they paid $5 a month in rent, according to the 1837 Census. 

I was unable to identify the Hall family in the 1850 U.S. Census. It is a possibility that the family members were some of the thousands of African Americans to flee the city after the barbaric white mob attacks of 1842. It is estimated that the Black population of Philadelphia decreased by 23.5% after 1842. (1)

Mr. Hall died on a mild day in January where the temperature was warm enough for the thawing to continue on the frozen Delaware and Schuylkill rivers.  

(1) A Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of the People of Colour of the City & Districts of Philadelphia, p. 7. Available at – 

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044010681914&view=1up&seq=7

Barnabas Henry Bartol was an engineer, inventor, and investor. He built a family empire that included real estate, foundries, utilities, and sugar refining. He would invent and/or build the huge machinery needed to run some of these businesses. Bartol would eventually become a major stockholder in these empires and reap the large financial benefits. 

In 1869, Philadelphia had over a dozen sugar refineries. It was one of the largest businesses in Philadelphia through the centuries. The factories were large and required a great deal of storage space for freight wagons, hogsheads (large barrels), lumber and the vast amount of trash produced by such industry. (See below image showing one of these enormous factories in Philadelphia.)

In 1869 Bartol was the head of the Grocers’ Sugar House (refinery) at 7th Street and Passyunk Avenue, three or four blocks from the Bethel Burying Ground.

The yellow arrow (lower left) indicates the location of the Grocers’ Sugar House. The red circle illustrates the location of the Bethel Burying Ground.

On January 1, 1869, Bartol signed a lease (below) to use Bethel Burying Ground for a storage yard for a rent of $200 a year. It was acknowledged by Bethel Church that the property was formerly a cemetery and that the human remains were still under the hard clay surface. There wasn’t a tombstone standing.

There was a well-known dark side to the sugar industry in its reliance on enslaved laborers who cut and crushed the sugar cane in the West Indies and the southern United States. With the south being defeated in the American Civil War and the British ending slavery in their Caribbean colonies, the focus turned to Cuba. Slavery in Cuba was not ended until 1886. The Philadelphia newspapers frequently wrote about the situation only ninety miles off the coast of Florida. (1)

Bartol made numerous trips to Cuba to inspect the sugar cane operations on the island. He saw the crushing toil of the 20 hour days during the harvest season without ever a day off. He stood next to the machinery that often mangled the bodies of the enslaved men, women and children. We know that he saw the beatings, whippings that flayed off the skin of the victims. (2)

Barnabus Bartol’s spouse, Emma, conscientiously kept a journal on her trips to Cuba with her husband. She wrote that slavery was a “curse,” however “The slaves belong to an inferior race and must yield to the superior intellect of the Caucasian races.” (2)

In August 1872, AME Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner wrote in The Christian Recorder calling attention to the disgrace of the Bethel Church trustees who have let the “consecrated grounds” of the church’s “Old Burial Ground” on Queen Street crumble. He laments that the plot is in disrepair and is being used as a dump for rubbish, old hogsheads, barrels, and lumber. “There is not a gravestone unbroken and not a grave to be seen – all in confusion and shame.”

For an unexplained reason, the trustees of Bethel Church and Barnabas Bartol in June of 1873, agreed to terminate the lease for the cemetery plot. Bartol agreed to erect a “good fence” around the grounds on his departure. (Minutes of the Bethel Trustees, 1878-1891).

(1) 7 May 1867, Philadelphia Inquirer; 30 Oct 1868, Evening Press; 12 Nov 1868, Telegram; 1 Dec 1868, Press; 21 Dec 1868, Philadelphia Inquirer; 2 March 1869, Philadelphia Inquirer.

(2) Recollections of a Traveller by Emma J. Barlot; (3) p. 73. The entire book is available online at https://www.hathitrust.org/