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, an inventory of which has been put on-line. Handwritten records go back as far as the 1750s.
