Cultural

The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society financed their activities through fundraisers like the annual Christmas anti-slavery bazaar. For that event, the women made and sold items like baked goods, anti-slavery alphabet books for children, and potholders embroidered with the words: Any holder but a slaveholder.

The earliest known American sampler was made by Loara Standish of the Plymouth Colony about 1645. By the early 1800s, academies for well-to-do young women flourished, and more elaborate pieces with motifs such as verses, flowers, houses, religious, pastoral, and mourning scenes were being stitched.

Chess pieces have historically been sculpted from precious metals, ivory, gemstones, porcelain, and matchsticks. Chess sets have featured underwater creatures, literary characters, fantastic monsters, and real-world armies. Throughout the game’s existence, craftsmanship has often been as important as playability. The Staunton pattern was named after famous British chess player Howard Staunton by Nathaniel Cooke in March of 1849 in the “Illustrated London News.”

The String of Pearls: A Romance was serially published as a penny dreadful in eighteen parts from 1846 to 1847 in Edward Lloyd’s The People’s Periodical and Family Library. Although it is still officially unknown who wrote The String of Pearls, Thomas Peckett Prest is frequently named and James Malcolm Rymer has been the more recent attributed author. In 1850, it was published as a book in an expanded form of 732 pages!

The hush harbor, also known as a brush harbor or a bush arbor, was a secluded informal structure, often built with tree branches, set in places away from masters so that slaves could meet to worship in private. Leaders within the slave community announced hush harbor gatherings with the use of coded language or songs, which traveled from one slave to another until the appointed time of the gathering.

St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, just west of Philadelphia, has a long tradition of training African American priests. In the late 19th century, the coming of the Pennsylvania Railroad spurred suburban development. The railroad drew affluent Philadelphians from the city to Overbrook Farms, Overbrook’s first residential housing development, which gave commuters rapid transit access to the city.