The Reverend John Boggs, 66, died this date, May 11th, in 1848 and was buried at Bethel Burying Ground. This pioneering missionary and former pastor of Bethel Church had a funeral procession of an estimated 1,000 individuals including 200 clergymen. However, according to Black journalist and historian William Carl Bolivar this number was less than the numbers for the funerals of Black band leader, composer and musician Frank Johnson (1842), James Forten (1842), Rev. Walter Proctor (1861) and slain civil rights leader Octavius V. Catto (1871). According to Bolivar, ” . . . this last in number [Catto] ranking next to Lincoln’s and General Meade’s.”*
Probable route, given that there were a thousand in the procession, of Rev. Boggs casket from his family’s residence in Acorn Alley (now South Schell St.) to Bethel Burying Ground in the 400 block of Queen Street. (East on Cedar St. – now South St. – and south on 5th St.)
Rev. Boggs’ wife, Sarah “Mother Boggs”, died on September 3, 1873 at 81 years of age. She was born in Maryland, worked as a cook and lived her final years at the Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Persons located at 340 South Front Street. (See below)
Established primarily by the Quakers in 1864, the Home for Aged and Infirmed Colored Persons was located at 340 S. Front Street.
*Philadelphia Tribune, October 10, 1914, p. 4.
Bethel Burying Ground Project 