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From Slavery to Freedom: Middle Class African Americans in Lancaster County

Hannah Bosley | Dinah McIntire | Steven Smith | William Whipper

From Columbia to Christiana: African Americans in Lancaster County
Primary sources and curricular materials

Little is known of "Doctress" Hannah Bosley. She was born into slavery in Maryland in 1813. While still enslaved, she married Thomas Prosser. Together they gained their freedom and moved to Columbia, Pennsylvania in the early 1850s. Her husband died soon after their arrival and she remarried to Isaac Bosley.

What medical skills she had and how she obtained them is unknown. She is often referred to as a "corn doctor" or chiropodist (a foot doctor). She was an active member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Columbia. She died in 1895.

Hannah Bosley

United States Census for 1880

Directory of Lancaster County, 1869-1870

Obituary of Hannah Bosley

Dinah McInitre was born ca. 1700-1710 into slavery in Maryland and bought by Col. Matthias Slough around 1760.

She was free by 1800 and bought a little house at the corner of West Vine and Strawberry Streets. Many older residents of the city will remember this area as "Dinah's Hill."

McInitre was somewhat of an eccentric, as she was known as the fortune teller at Matthias Slough's White Swan Inn in Lancaster. She had four children, none of whom survived her. She died in 1819 at the age of 113.

United States Census for 1810

Obituary of Dinah McIntire

Will of Dinah McInitire, 1819

Burial Record, St. James Church

Born into slavery in Paxton Township, Dauphin County in 1795, Stephen Smith was purchased by General Thomas Boude in 1802.

General Boude brought Smith to Columbia where he owned a lumber yard. Smith was an intelligent young man and Boude had him manage his lumber business by the time he was nineteen. Stephen Smith bought his freedom for $100. For another $50, he bought a little lumber and began a very profitable business of his own.

By the 1830s he owned one of the largest lumber yards in Columbia. In August and September of 1834, racial tensions in Columbia increased and riots erupted. Stephen Smith sold his business in Columbia and relocated to Philadelphia.

At this time, Smith was one of the wealthiest African-Americans in Pennsylvania. He owned $9,000 worth of stock in the Columbia Bridge Company and $18,000 worth of stock in the Columbia Bank. He also owned several homes in Columbia, Lancaster, and Philadelphia. Smith was also an active abolitionist and took part in many meetings of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society.

He also contributed and helped found many charitable organizations including the House for Aged and Infirmed Colored People and the Zion Mission in Philadelphia. At the time of his death in 1873, he was one of the wealthiest African-American men in America.

Advertisement for Stephen Smith's Lumberyard

Rioting in Columbia

Obituary of Stephen Smith

William Whipper was born in Drumore Township "the son of Nance a female slave on the twenty-second day of February in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred & four" (Records of Return of Slave Children Born After March 1, 1780 LC 326.9 R294) and raised in the home of a white lumberman in Columbia where his mother was a maid. He was a cousin to Stephen Smith and later became his business partner. They were known as Smith and Whipper, Lumber Merchants. Like Smith, William Whipper was an active abolitionist. Whipper was also a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. He would ferry slaves west to Pittsburgh, north to Canada, or send them with the company's freight of lumber to Philadelphia. Whipper moved to Philadelphia in 1834 where he became treasurer of the Philadelphia Building and Loan Association and a cashier of the Freedman's Bank. He died in 1876.

Image from
The Underground Railroad by William Still, Philadelphia, 1879