Osteobiographies of Mrs. Ann (née Crusoe) and Reverend Stephen H. Gloucester, Abolitionists of Philadelphia

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "“We the People”: Historical Cemetery Archaeology in Philadelphia" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Not all figures who sustain social or political movements are obvious or celebrated. For instance, in 1923 Rosetta Douglass Sprague published a short biography of her mother Anna Murray-Douglass, the first wife of Frederick Douglass. No such biography of Ann (Crusoe) Gloucester exists despite her husband Reverend Stephen H. Gloucester having been one of the most internationally prominent African-American abolitionists until his death in 1850. The unexpected discovery of the Gloucesters’ skeletal remains during renovations of their former church building in Philadelphia provides a unique opportunity to learn more about these remarkable but forgotten abolitionists. This paper presents their osteobiographies with an emphasis on the life of Ann (Crusoe) Gloucester, an African-American woman virtually unknown to history but influential in the abolitionist movement and crucial to her husband’s activism and ministry.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• “We the People”: Historical Cemetery Archaeology in Philadelphia   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology