"Who Deserves To Be Remembered?" Biography as Cultural History
- Valerie Harris
- Mar 25
- 4 min read
That question was posed by Tafari Robertson, curator of the “Black Historians’ Department: The Past Belongs to You,” an exhibition staged last summer at The Library Company of Philadelphia. The opening reception provided the incentive to visit this local research library and archive whose staff members acknowledged that this was one of the most well-attended events they’d staged in several years. The exhibition brought more African Americans to the venue at one time than any other event; the space was packed with an intergenerational mix of genealogists, students, collectors, and “speculative historians” – a term Robertson used to underscore the “imaginative possibilities” available to those of us who seek to revitalize the legacies of “those ignored or diminished” in current academic agendas.
“Who deserves to be remembered?” is a question that has resonated with me for years. As a writer, it has lead me to years of research for an upcoming #biography on the artist, #LauraWheelerWaring, conducting an in-depth exploration of her life, career, social milieu, even her death and burial. It has also informed my volunteerism in the community. Some time ago I took part in a project to create a digital record of headstones at #HistoricEdenCemetery in Delaware County, PA, a few miles outside Philadelphia. (BTW, my colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania used to tease me about my interest in cemeteries, but these are the final resting places of our cultural ancestors—the "New City", if you will, in which they made their last residence on earth.)
The goal of the digitization project was not only to create a visual record for Eden’s extensive archive, but to upload as many headstones as possible to sites such as “Find A Grave” where genealogists and family griots could locate long-missing ancestral information. For a biography and #culturalhistory buff like me, it was a labor of love.
The project required a group of us to meet at Eden for three or more Saturdays, our digital cameras and phones in hand. We traipsed carefully through the well-trimmed grass and dusty walkways of the cemetery’s designated sections--plot divisions that bear such names as Richard Allen, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and John Brown.
Some sections bear lesser-known names, such as (Martin J.) Lehmann and (Daniel) Parvis, two of the five African American businessmen who founded Eden in 1902, and Celestine—named after Celestine Mosely Cromwell, wife of an advisory board member and the first person to be buried at Eden. Celestine’s burial is notable not only for being the first internment but because her service was delayed for two days when a mob of local white citizens barred the entrance to Eden in protest of having a Negro cemetery in the vicinity. It took a court order to get the earthly remains of Celestine Cromwell put to rest.
There are plenty of notables buried at Historic Eden Cemetery---African American contributors to Philadelphia, national and international culture and history are well represented here. Some of them— Hannah Till, enslaved cook to George Washington during the Revolutionary war; early civil rights activist and martyr, Octavius Catto; abolitionist and businessman, James Forten; David Bustill Bowser, artist and designer of Colored Troops regimental flags; and the Reverend Absalom Jones, founder of the nation’s first African Episcopal Church—were re-interred at Eden when their original burial place, Lebanon Cemetery, located in Philadelphia, was condemned. Other luminaries buried at Eden include Underground Railroad agent, William Still; architect, Julian Francis Abele; Dr. Nathan Francis Mossell, founder of Douglas Memorial Hospital, Philadelphia’s first hospital for African Americans; Christopher J. Perry, founder of The Philadelphia Tribune, the country’s oldest continuously published African American-owned newspaper; and the international celebrated contralto, Marian Anderson. These are a scant few of the scores of exceptional “residents of Eden,” all of whom, named and unnamed, deserve to be remembered.
Teachers, business leaders, politicians, preachers--unsung heroes and heroines from all walks of life. You can learn a lot from tombstones alone. Note the difference between the tombstones of the artist, Laura Wheeler Waring and her long-time friend and collaborator, the writer, #JessieRedmonFauset. Each stone provides entrée to a particular story for a biographer to uncover.
We learn from the headstone that Fauset was married to Herbert E. Harris, is buried here with him and another family member, and the year that each of them died. On the side of the stone are carved a list of other Fauset family members, dating back to 1800.
In contrast, Waring was buried in her husband’s family plot. No dates. No indication of her professional accomplishments as an artist or an educator—or even that she is buried here at all. One has to check the cemetery records to know that for sure. I think that says something about how women’s legacies are erased over time.
Writers looking to amplify the black experience in America through the art and craft of biography need look no further than our hallowed burial places. Therein lies an endless number of fascinating subjects and engaging stories waiting to be told.
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