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who’s who Mary Ann Adger was married to Robert J. Adger and was the mother of fourteen children (including Bell, Lizzie, James, and Robert Jr.). She was a member of the Ladies’ Union Association. Robert M. Adger Sr. was born enslaved in Charleston, South Carolina. Although his mother was born free in New York, in 1810, while visiting friends in South Carolina, she was captured and enslaved. Adger’s family was eventually freed after their plantation owner died and friends filed legal papers. Adger relocated to Philadelphia in 1845 and worked as a nurse and as a waiter at Old Merchants Hotel, and he owned a furniture business on South Street above Eighth Street, in the Fourth Ward. He served as an elder and a member of the board of trustees at First African Presbyterian church. Adger was one of the signers of the 1863 “Call to Arms” circular. (Dr.) Thomas Amos was a minister and a teacher who had been born in Monrovia, Liberia—his parents were among the first black missionaries sent from America to work in Africa. They had been sent abroad by the Presbyterian Church. When Amos’s father died, he returned to America and studied at Ashmun Institute (now Lincoln University). He served as the pastor of First African Presbyterian from June 1889 to May 1891. After leaving First African, Amos served as the head of Ferguson Academy in Abbeville, South Carolina. (Dr.) James J. Gould Bias was born enslaved and worked as a bleeder, a cupper, a dentist, a practitioner of phrenology (the detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium, which is supposed to indicate character and mental abilities). He was a Mason and a Methodist preacher. Bias was also a founding member of Carthagenian Lodge No. 901 of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows and had worked with Charles Tourney, a white minister who helped runaway slaves escape north to Baltimore. Bias was married to Eliza Anne, who worked with him as his medical assistant and on the Underground Railroad. Ebenezer Black was a cleaner, a dyer, the corresponding secretary at First African Presbyterian Church and the owner of several real estate properties in and around Philadelphia. Black was one of the signers of the charter for the Philadelphia Library Company of Colored Persons along with James Forten Jr. (the eldest 220 Who’s Who son of sailmaker James Forten Sr. and the father of Charlotte Forten); boot maker and amateur musician Morris Brown Jr. (his father was Bishop Morris Brown Sr. of the African Methodist Episcopal Church); and well-known barbers Daniel B. Brown, William S. Gordon, and Thomas Butler. Black was also one of the signers of the 1863 “Call to Arms” circular. Ellen Black was one of Emilie’s closest friends. They sang together on the Singing School Association choir at First African and were both members of the Ladies’ Union Association. Her father was Ebenezer Black. Henry Barker Black was Ellen’s brother and a member of the Banneker Institute, an elite men’s intellectual organization. In 1866 he lived at 612 Barclay Street. David (Bouse) Bustill Bowser was an ornamental portrait painter who had studied under his cousin Robert Douglass Jr. (Douglass attended the School of Design and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; he was well known for painting and selling lithographs of William Lloyd Garrison in an effort to raise money for the abolitionist movement); a former steamboat barber who had worked on steamboats on the Mississippi and Red rivers; a grandmaster and grand secretary of Carthagenian Lodge No. 901 of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows 1872–92; and the grandson of Cyrus Bustill—one of the founders of Philadelphia’s Free African Society. Bowser was one of the signers of the 1863 “Call to Arms” circular and a member of the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas’, Philadelphia. Elizabeth (Lizzie) Harriet Stevens Gray Bowser was a seamstress and a member of the Ladies’ Union Association. Bowser was married to David Bustill Bowser and had three children: Raphael, a painter; Mary; and Ida Elizabeth Bowser Asbury, who was a music teacher, a violinist, and the first African American woman to earn a degree from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1860 the family lived in the Twelfth Ward at 841 North Fourth Street. Hannah Brown was married to John Brown, and they had a seven-year-old daughter , Lizzie. The Browns lived in Ward 10 of the East District...

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