Bethel Burying Ground Project

Three-year-old Ellen Sprigg* died this date, September 17th, in 1845 of Hydrocephalus and was buried at Bethel Burying Ground. Osborne (~35) and Rebecca Sprigg (~24) lived at 201 Lombard Street in the rear of the building. It appears that Rebecca was Osborne’s second spouse. On April 30, 1833, Mr. Sprigg married Sarah Matthews at St. James Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. It is very possible that Sarah died in the 1830s, however, I cannot verify that because the vast majority of those death records have been destroyed. 

At the time of their daughter’s death, Mr. Sprigg was employed as a waiter and Ms. Sprigg as a laundress. The entire family lived in one room for which they paid $3.50 a week rent. This is equivalent to approximately $100 in today’s U.S. currency.

The 1850 Federal Census lists the following Sprigg family members: Osborn (40y born in Maryland); Rebecca (29y/Delaware); Mary (11y/PA); William (10y/PA); Margaret (5/PA); Rebecca (3y/PA); James (15y/ PA) who was employed as a barber. The children attended the 6th and Lombard School. Five members of the family could read and three could write, according to the 1847 African American Census. In addition, this Census reports that Mr. Sprigg was a member of a Philadelphia temperance society.

As of 1842, there were ten active Black temperance societies in Philadelphia. Black interest in temperance societies appeared as early as 1788 when the Free African Society refused membership to all drinkers of alcohol. Political and cultural forces solidly linked temperance to the abolition movement and the moral and civil uplifting of African Americans in the United States. By the late 1830s, the temperance movement had come to symbolize solidarity with the enslaved. Mr. Sprigg belonged to a large group of African American Philadelphians who believed that alcohol was used to debilitate and subjugate Blacks and suppress their desire to rebel against white racist society. Two hundred years later, the same accusations would be made against heroin and crack cocaine. 

Mr. Sprigg may have been one of the 1,200 Black men and boys who, on August 1, 1842, marched through the streets of Philadelphia celebrating both their liberation from alcohol and also the anniversary of the British abolishing slavery in England and in their West Indies colonies. In the southern part of the city, the parade was met by a white mob made up mostly of Irish immigrants that numbered at least double that of the Black paraders who were savagely attacked. There was a running battle of clubs, stones, knives, and guns until the Blacks were overrun. Then began one of the worst acts of ethnic cleansing that a northern city had ever witnessed to this point in U.S. history.

Black paraders were killed and maimed. Countless homes of Black citizens’ homes were broken into, valuables were stolen and furniture destroyed. Many of their homes were burned to the ground.  The Second African Church and the newly built Black temperance hall also were completely destroyed by fire. The Black community began to flee the city in fear of their lives and the lives of their children. The ferries to Camden, New Jersey were jammed with terrified families. However, the docks of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers were manned by the Irishmen who attacked the innocent as they waited to escape. Three days of unchecked violence finally prompted the mayor to call out seven militia units to restore order. The courts, the city government, and the press placed the blame for the violence on the Black paraders. They claimed that free Black men provoked the white mob who could do nothing less than react in the way they did. The toll of dead and injured Black citizens has never been accurately assessed.

The above illustration is not of the Black temperance hall burned down in 1842. It depicts the burning of another Black-owned hall on May 17, 1838.

For further reading on the Black Temperance Movement and the August riot see:

A Gentleman of Color: The Life of James Forten, J. Winch; Forging Freedom, G. Nash;  Philadelphia Stories, S. Otter; Tasting Freedom, D. Biddle and M. Dubin.

*The family name is also spelled “Spriggs” and “Sprig” in census documents and city directories. In addition, “Osborne” in one occasion is spelled “Osborn.”

Sixty-year-old Alice Ricker died this date, September 7th, in 1849 of Fungus Haematodes* and was buried at Bethel Burying Ground. As the matriarch of the family, she was employed at the time of her death as a laundress. She lived at #4 Barley Alley above 10th Street in the City with someone who appears to be a married son or daughter (waiter/laundress) and his or her young daughter. They paid a very high $8 a month rent for their home. A typical Black waiter at this time would bring home $4-$5 a week. None of the Ricker family members were native to the state of Pennsylvania, according to the 1847 Philadelphia African American Census.

Barley Street was considered a cartway at only 6’10” wide. The 1847 Census reports that, in addition to the Ricker family, there were 56 other African American families living along Barley with a total of 245 individuals. The 1847 Census lists their occupations: 

 Man’s greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his                                                           powers to things needed to be done.                                                                                                                                                              Frederick Douglass

The fifteen-month-old son of African Methodist Episcopal preacher Jarena Lee died this date, August 24th, in 1818 of Cholera and was buried at Bethel Burying Ground. The child’s father, Rev. Joseph Lee, an African Methodist Episcopal minister, also died in 1818. Existing records do not indicate if his death occurred before or after the child mentioned above. The Lees had another son James who reached maturity. *

Preacher Lee at sixty years of age in 1844.

Mrs. Lee was an early feminist, abolitionist, equal rights advocate, author and a determined champion for women in the ministry. She rose up from servitude to become the first female preacher in the largest African American denomination of the era. She was born to free Black parents in Cape May, New Jersey on February 11, 1783. Her family name has not be recorded. At the young age of seven years, she was sent away by her parents to the Sharp family, sixty miles away, to work as a “servant maid.” According to her Journal, her adolescence was marked by episodes of severe depression and suicidal thoughts that would continue into her adulthood. 

Ms. Lee’s Journal is published in full at https://archive.org/details/religiousexperi00leegoog

Mrs. Lee initially published her autobiography in 1839 and updated it in 1849. It is a chronicle of her long spiritual journey. Historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar observed that “The writings of African American women, both elite and ordinary, demonstrate the difficulties of racism, sexism, motherhood, and familial obligations during the nineteenth century.” The male-dominated Bethel church congregation did not initially approve of a female preacher. However, when they saw the outpouring of support, they deferred to Bishop Richard Allen’s decision to give her access to the pulpit. Many men and women of both races traveled long distances to hear Mrs. Lee sermonize and conduct prayer meetings.***

Jarena Lee died February 5, 1864, at the age of eighty-one, impoverished and having to rely on others to keep alive. A social worker interviewed her several weeks before she died and reported ” . . . she endeavored to support herself for as long as she could (washerwoman) but in her last days depended upon the contributions of others, this was so distasteful to her that a short time before her death she remarked, ‘she wished she was done with begging’.” Her occupation listed on her death certificate was recorded as “Missionary.”*** During her lifetime, she preached up and down the Atlantic seaboard, often in slaveholding states, fulfilling her life’s mission while enduring many emotional and physical trials. She lamented in the 1849 edition of her autobiography that there was a wall between the white community and her “which was higher than I could possibly see over.” 

*Frederick Knight (January 2017). “The Many Names for Jarena Lee,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography. 141 (1): 59-68. ISSN 0031-4587.

**Erica Armstrong Dunbar, A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City, p. 97, 111-119.

*** Knight, p. 63.