Invisible Architects Walking Tour—5th St. between Arch and Race

Stop 2: 5th Street, between Arch and Race Streets

Now gone from this landscape are the stories of the General Vigilance Committee and Black families like that of James Oronoco Dexter, but you will find a marker for the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.

General Vigilance Committee
Look at the Mint building but now imagine a different building on this spot, the home of the General Vigilance Committee in the 1850s—truly a treasure for freedom seekers in the 1800s. The General Vigilance Committee aided fugitive slaves when they arrived in Philadelphia. William Still worked there and recorded information about hundreds of fugitives, like Henry “Box” Brown who mailed himself to Philadelphia in a wooden crate; and Ellen and William Craft who traveled by train from Georgia to Philadelphia to obtain their freedom. Ellen disguised herself as a white man, and her husband posed as her enslaved servant. Still’s 1872 book, The Underground Railroad, provided a written account of the many people who escaped slavery through this office.
William Still

Dexter House Site
James Oronoco Dexter was a free African American who lived at 84 North Fifth Street from 1790 until 1799. Dexter was one of at least six, free, black heads-of-households who lived on the block where the National Constitution Center sits today. A coachman—and formerly enslaved, Dexter was considered an important member of a vibrant African community here in Philadelphia. Dexter's efforts to aid his community date as early as 1782, when he and five other free Africans signed a petition to the state government to "fence in the Negroes Burying Ground in Potters Field" (now Washington Square).
James Dexter Site
Animal Bones, Dexter Household, 1790s
Petition to Pennsylvania by Six Free Black People – April 2, 1782

Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society
Notable as one of the most integrated anti-slavery groups, the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society included white and Black co-founders, among them Lucretia Mott, Grace Bustill Douglass, Sarah Mapps Douglass, Hetty Reckless, Charlotte Forten, and her daughters Harriet, Sarah, and Margaretta. This group championed racial and sexual equity.
Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society

FIND: "Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society" historical marker, east side of 5th Street near Market Street
Text: “Organized in 1833 by Quaker abolitionist Lucretia Mott, this society, headquartered here, originally consisted of sixty women who sought to end slavery. After the Civil War, the society supported the cause of the freed slaves.”