June 19, 1808. First Baptist Church in Philadelphia, offered “brethren of color” the use of its building. Blacks could be offered membership in a ‘white’ church, but that didn’t mean they would be considered equal. A researcher at ABHS recently found a record where a black member of a church was refused permission to bury his child in the church cemetery. ABHS has many of First Church Philadelphia’s original church records. Handwritten records go back as far as the 1750s. The earliest records from First Church, Philadelphia, are now online, thanks to a group called Philadelphia Congregations.
