She-roes: Some of Lancaster County's Notable African American Women

Late local historian Miriam Bixler gained a reputation for her research on a topic generally ignored by local historians: local women and their institutions. Even more unique is her article which appeared in the February 23, 1969 edition of the Sunday News with the title “Black History from Feminine Viewpoint.” In this article Bixler presents an overview of lesser known and better known local African American women about whom she summarized:

We know more than a little about only a handful of women in Lancaster County History. A first name, a line here or there or luckily a photograph or two make up the recordings of the Negro women until this mid-century. These, like most all our women, worked and struggled, laughed and cried, lived and died – but the hard way.

Mrs. Bixler lists ten Black women and her list includes the more recognizable names of Dinah McIntire, Lydia Hamilton Smith, Hannah Bosley, and Harriet Sweeny. The wife of hairdresser Elijah Boston is mentioned only as Mrs. Boston when in fact her name was Delilah and for a time she was called the “Black Swan of Lancaster”, an obvious nod to Elizabeth Greenfield, the famous concert performer who transitioned from slavery to a command performance before Queen Victoria.

Contemporary reviews of Delilah Boston’s concert were both effusive and tongue in cheek. Some reviewers lampooned the notion that a Black woman would try to arrogate to herself a role in high culture. It must be remembered that soon after Delilah Boston performed, the Manheim Tragedy, the gruesome double homicide in Manheim Township committed by itinerant Black workers, so aroused the local population that when the real “Black Swan” appeared at Fulton Hall, not one person was in attendance. As a reviewer noted in the newspaper, the word ‘black” was in ill repute at the time.

Rather than just names or as is the case of Lydia Hamilton Smith whose real import is generally eclipsed by her association with Thaddeus Stevens, Lancaster County’s Black women reflect the society in which they survived, if only barely. Dinah McIntire, for instance, came to Lancaster Borough as the property of German tavernkeeper Matthias Slough. She gained such notoriety as a fortune teller that well after a century after her death in 1819 the section of West Vine where her house had stood was known in the local vernacular as “Dinah’s Hill.” Although she had been enslaved, once she received her manumission, Dinah McIntire was able to accumulate some wealth and appears in the tax list of 1797 as the owner of two parcels of land.

Hannah Bosley courtesy of Lancaster History

This transition from enslavement to a certain level of enterprise capitalism is also apparent in the life of Hannah Bosley. Born in Maryland as chattel property when she arrived in Columbia with her husband, Thomas, Hannah Prosser soon took root in that community. Her husband died some time before 1860 because in that census she is married to Isaac Bosley. What is notable is that her household, the census indicates that Hannah rather than Isaac was the head of house, includes her five children and her parents Orange and Sarah Roberts aged 89 and 87 respectively. Her son George who was 18 in 1860 later served in the Massachusetts 54th Volunteers, the first regiment of Black volunteers raised in the North to defend the Union. Like Lydia Hamilton Smith there is a photograph of Hannah Bosley, attired to follow her self-styled profession of “corn doctor”. She was a podiatrist who traveled widely to treat her patients. One reportedly was the mother of a vice president of the US. Besides being a successful entrepreneur Hannah Bosley was also politically active. Unfortunately the only proof of that activism is a deliberately racist description of a meeting in Columbia in 1870 to prepare for the day of Jubilee.

The ratification of the 15th Amendment in March 1870 was welcomed by the Equal Rights League of Pennsylvania with a series of events staged by local affiliates of the Equal Rights League throughout the Commonwealth. At the Columbia boro meeting Doctress Bosley was in attendance. Her role was left unspoken probably because women and especially Black women were not supposed to be engaged in political activity in 1870. It was not, however, political activism that determined Hannah Bosley’s legacy, it was her folksy stories. Collected by her executrix and published 1912 in the Southern Workman, the house publication of the Hampton Institute in Virginia, these stories feature razor sharp and sardonic witticisms. A good example is her story about a railroad trip to Media to visit a client.

It was a icy cold day and at the front of the railroad car was a pot belly stove and Hannah decided to stop and warm her hands. A conductor pointed angrily at the sign on the wall of the car which stated “Colored to the Rear” and said sarcastically, “Can’t you read?” Hannah responded “Oh thank you! I did not realize that only the rear part of the car was going to Media.’

This type of repartee is generally known as “Putting on Master”. Hannah was quite accomplished in that genre as the other stories document.

To echo Miriam Bixler, some local Black women such as Hannah Bosley took a difficult situation, namely, their recent enslavement which was designed to reduce them to mere property and were able to transform it into a commentary on contemporary racial mores. Another woman, Harriet Sweeny, was slightly more fortunate than Hannah in that she was not born into slavery. She was born on March 31, 1815 as Harriet Richardson and was baptized in Columbia’s Presbyterian Church on May 6, 1817. Her parents were Robert and Nancy Richardson, residents of Conestoga Township.

The 1850 and 1860 census returns for Conestoga indicate that she is married to David Malson, 22 years her senior who earns his living as a carter, a merchant who sell his wares from a cart. David cannot read but Harriet can. What is interesting is that despite the fact that no occupation is listed for her she is the only member in the household who owns property. In the 1840’s she bought two parcels of land in Conestoga and the transactions note that the purchased land was only for her use and not her spouse’s. According to the 175 Atlas of Lancaster County Harriet was a "sympathetic physician." Generally referred to as Doctress, Harriet was a pow wow doctor. Almost nothing is known about her first husband David Malson or her second husband, Daniel Sweeny, but Harriet is still known by oldtimers in Conestoga despite her death in 1884.

Harriet Sweeney appears in the 1875 Historical Atlas of Lancaster County as a “sympathetic physician,” a term often associated with homeopathic or alternative medical practice in the nineteenth century.

Like Dinah McIntire, Harriet had a large clientele. Its size is perhaps surmised by the fact that in 1880 the Lancaster City and County Medical Association brought suit against her and a certain John Campbell for practicing medicine without training or a license. No bill was brought against Harriet and Campbell won in the court hearing and the Medical Association was left to pay the legal costs. Harriet was in fact grandfathered because she had practiced medicine well before the law was passed requiring doctors to be trained according to certain guidelines.

This article from the Lancaster Examiner (March 10, 1880) reports on the start of Harriet Sweeney’s legal challenge against the Lancaster County Medical Society.

It is unclear how Harriet Sweeny became a pow wow doctor but according to tradition, a woman can train a man or vice-versa but a woman cannot be trained by another woman or a man by another of his gender. Eminent scholar Don Yoder defined pow-wowing as the confluence of the healing traditions of Europe, Africa, and Native Americans in the border area of Pennsylvania and Maryland. My great-grandmother’s brother, Jacob B. Warner, was likely trained by Harriet since he boarded in her household in 1880 and was a mentioned as a trustee of the Conestoga A.M. E. Church in her transaction in the 1870’s which gave land and a building for the small congregation. The stories about her dabbling in the healing arts have eclipsed her very real philanthropy. Reportedly when Bethel A.M.E. Church in Lancaster was partially destroyed by arson in 1879 Harriet Sweeney gave money towards rebuilding the edifice. Her role at Lancaster’s Bethel may have been even greater as a newspaper account from August 1870 indicates.

After the large procession in April that celebrated the ratification of the 15th Amendment, a group met at Bethel led by Rev. Robert Boston who had been president of the Ratification celebration. The purpose of the meeting was to issue proclamations to influence the newly enfranchised Black voters as to their choice of party to support. Doctress Sweeney was in attendance and it was resolved, likely with the recent memory of the Johnson Administration, to support the Republican Party so long as it supported the best interests of Black Americans. Harriet died on July 27, 1884 and it is perhaps indicative that in the last census in which she appeared she is listed as being a Doctress but the family wealth is listed under her husband’s name. Just before her death, Harriet advertised in the newspaper that Dr. A.B. Miller of 14 Conestoga Street in Lancaster would be continuing her practice. After Harriet’s death Miller advertised in local newspapers that he was the successor to Mrs. Doctress Harriet Sweeny.

I have deliberately omitted the prominent contemporary of Harriet Sweeny, Lydia Hamilton Smith, trusting that the forthcoming book by local writer Mark Kelley will do her justice. Instead I would like to now turn to two women who were born soon after Harriet Sweeny’s death. Carrie Foster (1885-1963) and Ruby M. Cook (1894-1969). Of the two, Mrs. Foster was native born. She was born in Marietta as the daughter of William Cain and Mary Mallen Cain. At the age of 21 she married Daniel Michael Foster, originally from South Carolina, who was 22 and reported his profession as house work. Carrie Cain has no profession listed in the marriage license and when her daughter Jean provided the information for her death certificate, she described her mother as a domestic.

These two descriptions would lead the uninitiated to believe that like the generally unrecognized majority of Black women, Carrie Foster was just another woman relegated to menial employment. Further investigation proves the exact opposite. Although born in Marietta, it is Bethel A.M.E. Lancaster where she spent the majority of her adult life. Women in Black churches are generally the majority of the congregation and the church’s work is not done without them. Choir member, Sunday School teacher, Stewardess, and Steward are just some of the roles assumed by women. Mrs. Foster assumed a very important position as a relatively young woman of 32. She served as the president of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Negro Civic League, an organization called into existence by Bethel’s minister from 1916-1920, Rev. F.T.M. Webster. Goal of the organization was to improve living conditions for Blacks in Southeastern Pennsylvania. To that end auxiliary groups were organized in Columbia and probably also in Marietta. Peter Blackwell, the first Black council member in Steelton, served for a time as a vice president of the group, perhaps an indication of the group’s organizational reach.

Source: Provided

What is known about the group can only be derived from a conference brochure which Mrs. Foster’s granddaughter found among her effects and a number of newspaper accounts from the period 1917-1923. Mrs. Foster can be used to indicate what the group was able to accomplish in a society in which racism and discrimination was inscribed in tradition if not explicitly in law. A member of the Ladies Auxiliary recommended that a day nursery be organized to assist working parents. Lancaster already had a day nursery but Black children were apparently not welcome there. Appropriately the nursery was named for Rev. Webster’s late wife, Ella Webster. At about the same time it was decided that recreation should be offered to youth as well as adults. A woman’s group named after Hallie Q. Brown, a professor of Elocution at Wilberforce University and a pioneer in the Colored Women’s Club movement that agitated for voter rights and against lynching, was organized at Bethel A. M..E. Church and Mrs. Foster was a member. Besides organizing the Colored Recreation Center many of the women from the Ladies Auxiliary were among the charter members of the Lancaster Chapter of the NAACP in 1923. Mrs. Foster’s name appears in some of the articles identifying the chapter’s activities. Finally in October 1929 the Colored Recreation Center met to announce that it was officially changing its name to the Crispus Attucks Community Center and was hiring as its social secretary Ruby Martin Bohee, the final woman of note that I want to discuss.

Obituary of Ruby Cook printed in the Intelligencer Journal (Lancaster, Pennsylvania), February 18, 1969.

Ruby Martin Bohee was born in Carlisle, Ohio in 1894. When she came to Lancaster in 1929 she had two children with her, Sumner and Marcie Bohee. Within a few years she remarried, this time to William Payne who describes his profession as chauffeur, a common profession for many Black men who were able to obtain a better profession in the service industry. During my childhood I got to know Mrs. Payne because of her work at the Crispus Attucks and also because my mother and her niece were assistant cooks there in the 1940’s. I attended the day care program there and later profited from the hot lunch project supported by Church Women United who made it possible for even the most indigent child to receive a $0.09 lunch.

Mrs. Foster served on the board of the Crispus Attucks from the beginning up to at least the 1950’s, serving as the board president for multiple terms. It is difficult to articulate exactly how important the Crispus Attucks Community Center was for African Americans and also some white residents of the City’s 7th Ward. No one referred to it as the Crispus Attucks. It was merely the Center to everyone and it was the heart of the social life of the neighborhood.

Not much research has been applied to Mrs. Payne’s life but some clues are perhaps on deposit in the voluminous archive owned by her granddaughter. Among other institutions Mrs. Payne had studied at Wilberforce University. Her granddaughter showed me a handwritten letter to her written by Hallie Q. Brown after a visit to Lancaster. It is significant that after an initial visit in 1923, Hallie Q. Brown clearly returned after Mrs. Payne assumed her duties as director of the Center. This connection is significant when one considers the activities initiated by Mrs. Payne. Prominent speakers were brought to participate in a lyceum which attracted wide interest. Courses in choral music, crafts, sewing, personal hygiene, and dramatics were just some of the activities offered at the Crispus Attucks. Just as important as the activities conducted on site where the speeches given by Mrs. Payne offsite in which she advocated for on the job training for Black youth, improved housing, and generally improving access for African Americans to Lancaster’s mainstream political and economic life. Real change did not, however, come until a new generation came to the fore in the 1960’s and demanded change through direct action. The Lancaster Chapter of the NAACP, re-organized in 1960, led protests in downtown Lancaster and at Rocky Springs Amusement Park against discrimination in employment and access to the park’s swimming pool.

The role which Bethel A.M.E. Church had in this development was significant and is not generally appreciated. The first president of the Lancaster Chapter was Laura Carter, a member of Bethel. When the chapter was reorganized after a little over a decade in limbo, Ashley Dudley, a member of Bethel was elected president. The arrival of Alexander L. Stephans as pastor a few years later energized the chapter and a new era of activism was initiated that led the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce to sponsor a doctoral dissertation which led to the creation of an Urban League affiliate. Mrs. Foster would have likely been asked to serve on the Urban League board but she died in 1963. Mrs. Payne who had divorced her second husband and married Cuthbert Cook, a retired railroad employee, had retired from the Crispus Attucks in 1959 and her obituary states that she had succumbed to a prolonged illness.

What makes these women she-roes? Common to all of them is their ability to rise above their circumstances and become productive members of their society. Some had been enslaved but did not retain a slave mentality. Those fortunate enough to live in the relative freedom of the North worked to overcome the strictures imposed upon their race by tradition and tried to improve the situation for future generations. Although denied opportunities themselves, Mrs. Foster was an attendant at the Comfort Station in Penn Square, these women worked in organizations to change society to make it more just for everyone.