Bethel Burying Ground Project

The original death certificate for the child no longer exists. The above is the Board of Heath weekly summary.

The five-year-old child of Lewis and Elizabeth Roberts died this date, October 13th, in 1828 of Bilious Fever.* The child’s first name and gender are not recorded. Nine years later, the 1830 U.S. Census (below) reports that there is a total of seven individuals in the Roberts family and all were not native to Pennsylvania. Mr. Roberts did not appear in the Philadelphia city directories until 1837. 

The 1830 U.S. Census

In 1837, according to the African American Census, Mr. Roberts was employed as a porter while Ms. Roberts was employed as a dressmaker. There was another adult woman in the household who worked as a milliner or a women’s hatmaker. The family lived at #29 Currant Alley, for which they paid $5.50 a month. That amount would be close to what Mr. Roberts would earn in a week. 

Currant Alley (red pin) was located between Spruce and Locust Streets and 10th and 11th Streets.

The star indicates the two-block long Currant Alley.

Ninety-six Black families lived in the densely packed Currant Alley, with a staggering total of three hundred twenty-one Black family members, according to the 1847 Census. The Census also showed that the Currant Alley adults were solidly working class, having a wide range of laboring and domestic jobs to which African American men and women were restricted.

Philadelphia Board of Health records show that the Roberts family child was one of 119 Philadelphians to die of Bilious Fever in 1828. Lewis and Elizabeth Roberts buried their child on an Indian Summer day at Bethel Burying Ground.

The 12-hour-old twins of Mary Ann and Isaac Webber were born and died on this date, October 10th, in 1824 and were buried at Bethel Burying Ground. Ms. Webber delivered a boy and girl after only seven months of pregnancy. Sadly, Ms. Webber would die fourteen-months later of Typhus Fever. She was buried at Bethel Burying Ground with her children – see below.

Mary Ann Webber was twenty-five-years-old at the time of her death. Mr. Webber was twenty-eight-years-old. The family lived at 290 South 7th Street.

It appears from census records that Mr. Webb remarried a woman whose first name was also “Mary.” The 1837 Philadelphia African American Census shows this couple living in a room on Osborne’s Court with four other individuals. The family paid approximately $2.85 per month in rent. Mr. Webber worked as a porter, likely making $3-$5 a week. Ms. Webber was employed as a seamstress, likely making around $2 a week.

Only two of the six family members were born in Pennsylvania. There were three children, two of whom were attending school. The family worshipped at Bethel A.M.E. Church.

Although working poor, it appears that Mr. Webber had fought back from filing for “Insolvency” (bankruptcy) in 1830.*

The red pin in the map above shows the location of Osborn’s Court located near both Pennsylvania Hospital and Washington Square. Osborn’s Court is now named Darien Street.

A 1945 photograph of Darien Street.

The 1850 U.S. Census shows Isaac and Mary Webber in their early 50s with six-year-old Mary A. Watson. The child may be a grandchild, named after her deceased maternal grandmother.

I was unable to find death certificates for either Isaac or Mary Webber.

The graves of Mary Ann Webber and her children still exist in the Bethel Burying Ground.

*Philadelphia Inquirer, 12 January 1830.

The nine-month-old unnamed daughter of Susan and Horatio Fleming died this date, September 29th, in 1854 of Marasmus* and was buried at Bethel Burying Ground. Ms. Fleming was thirty-two years of age at the time of her child’s death while Mr. Fleming was thirty-nine-years-old, according to the 1850 U.S. Census. She was born in Pennsylvania while he was born in Delaware. They had another child, Elizabeth, who was born in Pennsylvania and was four-years-old at the time of her sister’s death.

The red pin illustrates the location of the Fleming home in Joy Alley. The red arrow illustrates the location of Bethel A.M.E. Church at 6th and Lombard Streets.

The Fleming family lived in one room on very small Joy Alley, located just off Lombard Street between 10th and 11th Streets. Mr. Fleming worked as a waiter and Ms. Fleming in the home. In 1854, Philadelphians were in the fourth year of a Cholera epidemic. In that year alone, 1,446 adults and children would die from the disease.** It is likely that the Fleming child died from this awful illness.

Philadelphia Inquirer, 24 January 1848

In addition to the wave of deadly disease threatening the Black community, there was the ever-present racial violence. There was organized violence in the form of the large white mobs marauding through the Black neighborhoods, killing and burning Black people’s homes, churches and halls. And then there were neighborhood gangs. The vicious white gangs with the names of ‘Killers’ and ‘Stingers’ who would randomly target Blacks walking home from church, work, or the market. The Flemings’ neighborhood was infamous for the latter. In addition, the 10th and Lombard intersection was the site of numerous pitched battles between the notoriously violent white volunteer fire companies that the police couldn’t or wouldn’t break up. If you are an African American man or women in 1854 with gangs of white men outside your door, knifing and shooting each other, you had to fear for your life and the safety of your family every day.***

The Flemings buried their daughter at Bethel Burying Ground on a fair-weather day in late September 1854. And bizarrely, on the same day, the P.T. Barnum Circus Menagerie paraded through the city, passing through the 10th and Lombard neighborhood. (Philadelphia Inquirer, 30 September 1854)

*Marasmus was a general term for not being able to take in and/or utilize nutrition. 

**A Documentary and Bibliographic Study of Philadelphia’s Growth by Susan E.            Klepp.

***Philadelphia Inquirer, 2 May 1849; Public Ledger, 7 October 1850.

One-year-old Levi Palmer died this date, September 28th, in 1849 from “inward weakness of the lungs” and was buried at Bethel Burying Ground. Doctor Stikes, an herbalist, misspelled the last name. He has it as ‘Pamer.’ Census records have it as ‘Palmer.’ 

The child’s father also was named ‘Levi,’ according to the death certificate. Mr. Palmer was born in Delaware and was in his early 30s at the time of his son’s death, according to the 1860 U.S. Census. There is no record of Mr. Levi participating in the 1850 U.S. Census, so we do not have the name of the child’s mother. In the 1860 Census, Mr. Levi is single. I could find no death certificate for the child’s mother.

The red pin illustrates the location of the Palmer home that is next to the vast open-air Second Street Market.

In 1847, the Palmer family lived in a small room at 162 Lombard Street for which they paid $3.33 a month. Mr. Palmer was employed as a hog (brick) carrier for which he may have earned $4-$5 a week. Ms. Palmer worked as a domestic and may have made $1-$2 a week at the most. Little Levi was their only child. 

The Second Street Market was a vital part of the community. The street-wide two-block long structure ran from Pine Street to South Street. The structure contained designated stalls for everything from fresh produce, meats, bread, cakes, and seafood to household items such as brooms and soaps. However, when the sun went down and the vendors closed up shop, the giant shed turned into a clubhouse for violent criminals and savage white gangs determined to eradicate Blacks from the city. This was occurring at their front door. Law enforcement was irrelevant. The Black community was on its own. 

One-year-old Levi Palmer died on a late day in September where the weather was “fair” with a “drying wind.” The temperature rose to 77 degrees in the afternoon from a low of 57 degrees at sunrise. 

One-hundred-year-old Rebecca Miller died this day, September 23rd, in 1847 of “old age.” The 1837 African American Census shows that she was a widow and worked as a laundress. Ms. Miller was freeborn and worshipped at Bethel A.M.E. Church. There is no indication, from surviving records, that Ms. Miller’s deceased spouse was interred at Bethel Burying Ground. 

Ms. Rebecca Miller lived at #3 Gray’s Alley (red arrow) located near the intersection of 2nd and Walnut Streets very near the Delaware River. 

For many years, Ms. Miller lived in the rear of #3 Gray’s Alley near 2nd and Walnut. The building was the business address of Samuel Moss and Son, a very prosperous import business. Ms. Miller lived in the back of this building in a converted horse stall or pig pen with dirt floors. Ms. Miller is not listed by name in the 1847 Philadelphia African American Census. However, an educated guess puts her sharing a 10′ x 10′ room at #3 Gray’s Alley with Ms. Anna Brown who was employed as a domestic. It appears that, with the addition of Ms. Brown, Ms. Miller started residing in the building after it had been transformed into a tenement. The 1847 Census shows that the women paid $1.45 a month in rent for their room – that was probably more than Ms. Brown earned in a week. There is no evidence that Ms. Miller was still employed at the time of her death.

Rebecca Miller was born in Philadelphia in 1747, forty-two years before George Washington was sworn in as president of the new United States of America. To understand what Ms. Miller experienced is unfathomable. In 1763, when she was twenty-six-years-old, did she see or smell the slave ship Africa with its cargo of one-hundred kidnapped Black men, women, and children from the coast of Guinea sail up the Delaware River? Slaver Thomas Riche of Philadelphia would yearly “import” a quantity of rum, Madeira, sugar, and humans. *

Pennsylvania Journal, 4 October 1763

In 1806, when she was sixty-nine years old, did she see the twelve-year-old enslaved Black boy that was “lightly dressed and barefoot” walking in Philadelphia with a locked iron collar around his neck “and from each side of it an iron bow passed over his head?” Did their eyes meet? As a child, did she pass John Coats’ brickyard in the Northern Liberties District and see all the enslaved Black men locked in iron collars with shackles to keep them from escaping? She surely witnessed the slave auctions at the London Coffee House, only several blocks from her home.**

Philadelphia’s slave market

Rebecca Miller, in her 101st year, died on a late September day in 1847 and was buried at Bethel Burying Ground. The day started out chilly and foggy but, as the day went on, the sun came out and the temperature rose to a comfortable seventy-four degrees.

*Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and its Aftermath by G. Nash and J. Soderlund, p. 26; Pennsylvania Journal, 4 Oct 1764.

**In 1761-1762, the colonial government of Pennsylvania decided to levy a duty on all kidnapped Africans coming into Port Philadelphia. This was done to stymie the trade. To avoid the extra cost, the slave traders would unload their human cargo in Camden, New Jersey, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. Those who desired to buy the Africans would travel across and then transport the men, women, and children by ferry to Philadelphia’s slave market. In doing this, they would incur the duty themselves. (Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave by Elizabeth Donnon, vol. III, pp. 453-455.)