January 2004
In commemoration of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s and African American History Month, The Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia is pleased to present three portraits that celebrate the achievements of African Americans in the first half of the 19th century and the contributions they made to the economic and cultural life of the city and the nation.
Before the outbreak of the Civil War, Philadelphia was home to the nation's biggest community of free African Americans. Free Blacks had lived in the city as early as the 1720s and their numbers increased rapidly after 1776, when Quakers were required to free their slaves. In 1780, the state of Pennsylvania passed a law gradually emancipating slaves. Many freed men and women came from the countryside to Philadelphia in search of work and the fellowship of the African-American community.
While slavery continued south of the Mason Dixon Line, Philadelphia's free African Americans overcame hardships to form communities centered on churches, such as the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas and Bethel Methodist Church (Mother Bethel). Two national self-help organizations, the Free African Society and the American Moral Reform Society, were formed in Philadelphia to provide leadership in the struggle to end slavery and win equality before the law.
While Philadelphia's free African Americans made great strides in the first half of the 19th century, they also experienced great disappointments. Beginning in 1829, and continuing for the next 20 years, race riots periodically destroyed African-American homes, businesses and churches. In 1838, Pennsylvania's new Constitution took away the right of African-American men to vote. At the same time, immigrants from Europe were shouldering African Americans out of many occupations. Yet in this period many members of Philadelphia's African American community offered their time and money to the cause of their enslaved brothers and sisters in the South.
(pictured above)
Yarrow Mamout, 1819
Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827)
Oil on canvas
Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection at Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia, given to the Society by Charles S. Ogden
Born in West Africa, Yarrow Mamout was brought to this country as a slave sometime in the mid 1700s. In April 1796, the will of Brooke Beale in Montgomery County, Maryland, records Mamout as sixty years old and worth "seven pounds ten shillings." In that year Mamout received his freedom from Brooke's son Upton. As a free man, Mamout started a hauling business in and around Washington, D. C. Later he bought property in Georgetown (his home was at 3330-3332 Dent Place, N. W.). Throughout his life Mamout followed the Islamic faith.
Charles Willson Peale made this portrait during a visit to Washington, D.C., in the winter of 1818-19 to paint prominent Americans for his Philadelphia museum. According to Peale's journal, during a visit to Georgetown he heard of Mamout as "healthy, active and very full of fun" and said to be turning 134 years old. Interested in longevity, Peale visited Brooke Beale's widow to confirm the story. Mrs. Beale told Peale that Mamout computed his age in lunar months (which are a little shorter than our calendar years). So Mamout may not have been 134 in our terms, but he was certainly a centenarian.
John Brown, after 1860
David Bustill Bowser (1820-1900)
Oil on canvas
Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection at Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia, bequest to the Society from Ida Bowser Asbury, the artist's daughter.
David Bustill Bowser, one of Philadelphia's most important African-American artists of the 1800s, painted this portrait of Abolitionist John Brown. Bowser was known for his portraits, including at least two of Abraham Lincoln, but appears to have made the better part of his living painting signs and banners and decorating equipment for fire companies. Modern collectors of American folk art prize his fire hats. Bowser also received a commission to paint regimental flags for Pennsylvania's African-American troops in the Civil War.
John Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut, in 1800. His pious parents were ardent Abolitionists. Brown also fought against slavery, sometimes violently, for his entire life. He is best remembered today for his raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. On October 16, 1859, Brown led twenty-one men, including five African Americans, against the fort. He believed that the attack would lead to a general uprising of slaves in the South. Instead, U.S. Marines under Bvt. Colonel Robert E. Lee surrounded the men, killing ten. Convicted of treason, Brown was hanged in Charlestown, Virginia, on December 2, 1859.
Stephen Smith, c. 1840-1850
James Stidun (dates are not known)
Oil on canvas
Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection at Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia, given to the Society by Mrs. Henrietta Clemens Mouserone, special representative of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Stephen Smith was born into slavery in Cecil County, Maryland, sometime around 1797. At the age of 21 he purchased his freedom and soon after moved to Columbia, Pennsylvania. Smith opened a coal and lumberyard and began shipping coal and timber throughout Pennsylvania. His firm, Smith & Whipper, purchased a freighter for moving goods across the Great Lakes to Canada.
In 1842, Smith and his wife, Harriett Lee Smith, moved to Philadelphia. He left his partner William Whipper, a prominent black philadelphian, in charge of his business in Columbia. After the Civil War, Whipper revealed the two partners' involvement in the Underground Railroad, shipping fugitive slaves from Philadelphia in railroad cars, then ferrying them by freighter across Lake Erie to freedom in Canada.
Smith was active in the economic, political and social life of Philadelphia's African American community. Ordained to preach in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, he gave generously to many charities, including Mother Bethel. He built Smith's Beneficial Hall as a meeting place for black organizations. The hall burned in the riots of August 1842 when many homes of African Americans were also destroyed. Smith also invested in real estate within the city. At the time of his death in 1873, he owned more than 100 houses, lots and buildings. He left the bulk of the estate to found the Stephen Smith Home for the Aged, a residence for older African Americans at 1050 Belmont Avenue. The Smith Home is now West Philadelphia Geriatrics at 44th Street and Girard Avenue.
Virtually nothing is known of the artist John Stidun. The museum's collections contain Stidun's pendant portrait of Smith's wife, Henrietta Lee Smith. The donor of both portraits, Smith's grandniece Henrietta Clemens Mouserone, identifies Stidun as a "prominent Negro artist" in her manuscript life of Smith. The portrait's canvas has the stamp of a Philadelphia store, but there is no listing for Stidun in the Philadelphia directories. We hope to discover more information about the artist.
