From Paschall's Alley to the Harlem Renaissance: The Legacy of Deep Community Care

INTRODUCTION

We are proud to introduce a new Story Map and Self-Guided Tour that brings to life the people and places of nineteenth-century Northern Liberties. Using census records, deeds, historical maps, and archival research, we invite you to explore the layered histories of Black Philadelphia families who turned streets into sanctuaries and ordinary homes into anchors of liberation.

This blog offers an overview of that journey, highlighting a few of the key lives and spaces you'll discover in the full digital map experience.

Introduction

This community scene from the early 1900s in South Philadelphia is what we think Paschall's Alley may have looked like. '1326 Kenilworth Street' from Temple Special Collections, https://digital.library.temple.edu/digital/collection/p245801coll13/id/525/rec/30

This is the story of ordinary people who built extraordinary lives. In the narrow alleys and bustling streets of Northern Liberties, Black families in the early nineteenth century owned homes, raised children, organized churches, and founded beneficial societies.

Many were formerly enslaved, some were recent arrivals, and others were born free. Roughly 10–12% were homeowners. And all were builders of a future rooted in dignity and care.

Through everyday acts of labor, love, and community, they laid the foundation for generations to come.

By following the Fauset family across time and streets we glimpse the everyday strength of a community that turned freedom into foundation. Their names may not all be in history books, but their lives shaped the course of a city and a nation - and in the case of Jessie Redmon Fauset, helped spark the Harlem Renaissance itself.

Paschall’s Alley: A Sanctuary of Struggle and Stability

In the 1830s and 1840s, Paschall’s Alley (later Lynd Street, now Wallace Street) was more than a residential lane. It was, as the Philadelphia Tribune noted in 1914, the site where "more slaves were sheltered... (some two thousand) than in any other in the country." Historian Charles Blockson affirmed that "more runaway slaves were hidden in houses on Pascal Alley than in any other area in Philadelphia."

The 1838 and 1847 Pennsylvania Abolition Society Census' give us statistics about the lives of people on Paschall's Alley. 1847 Census data courtesy Swarthmore College.

At the heart of this resistance network was Mary Lewton. In 1809, her husband John purchased a home at 25 Paschall’s Alley. Census data shows that their household included several non-native Pennsylvanians, likely newly manumitted individuals. Mary, who "mothered to scores" and founded Union A.M.E. Church, was known in oral histories as "Mother Mary." Her sanctuary hosted thousands of freedom seekers, and her labor and presence helped define the values of the block.

The many call outs to the good work of Mother Mary Lewton. Sources listed below.

Redmon Fauset: Childhood Formed by Faith and Community

After the death of his father Francis Fauset, a plumber and churchman buried at Union, young Redmon Fauset and his siblings grew up on Paschall’s Alley with his mother Susan. In this crowded, faith-centered community, he witnessed the daily work of care and community building. Redmon became a reverend at Union A.M.E. and a civil rights leader in the Social, Civil, and Statistical Association alongside leaders like William Still and Jacob C. White Sr.

Here we see that Redman Faucet and William Still are working together to bring Frederick Douglass to town. From the Leon Gardiner Collection, Courtesy Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Redmon’s ties to Still suggest he may have been a carrier of oral history - that the story of Mary’s good works from his Paschall’s Alley upbringing may have been carried on by him.

The Fauset family spent three decades on Paschall's Alley.

His daughter Jessie, born after the family moved to Lawnside, NJ, carried this legacy forward. A leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance, she helped shape a generation of literary greats, editing for The Crisis and mentoring writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.

Jesse Redman Fauset's book Plum Bun, starts with a description of a simple street like Paschall's Alley.

Ordinary Lives That Anchored the Future

From Rebecca Lambsong, a washer and member of the Female Vigilance Committee, to James Griffeth, a brickmaker who owned his own home, (a structure that still exists today) the stories of Northern Liberties are filled with care-work, labor, and deep interdependence.

This house was James Griffeth's house - at 113 Apple street

Figures like Scipio Cornish, a drayman with three horses and carts, and David Leary, a tanner raising six children, show how freedom came with risk, sweat, and structure. The alleyways and courts of this neighborhood were filled with overlapping families, workspaces, and Sabbath school lists, where children borrowed books under the guidance of Zoar Church.

Faith as Infrastructure: Union and Zoar

Union A.M.E., founded in 1809, began as a small wooden building and grew under the care of leaders like Mary Lewton and Francis Fauset. Redmon Fauset grew up in this environment, attended Sabbath school here, and eventually taught.

Zoar ME Church in 1884, after the congregation had moved to Melon street. Courtesy the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Just blocks away, Zoar Church, founded in 1794, was another hub. Perry Tilghman became its pastor at just 20 years old. The church hosted migrants, housed a library, and even preserved Vigilance Committee notes in its basement.

The Legacy: Community Care

These households created stability not just for themselves but for generations to come. When we walk the streets of Northern Liberties today, we are walking in the footprints of a community that made care their daily practice.

Their legacy isn’t only found in the names we remember - like Mary Lewton and Jessie Redmon Fauset - but in the quiet acts of neighborly love that built something stronger than brick and mortar.

Isaac Riggs served as executor of Rebecca Lambsong’s will. Rebecca left her estate to her sister, Hannah Hicks, who lived just across the street. James Julius Jr. and John Murray volunteered for the United States Colored Troops. Isaac Davis helped maintain the church burial ground. At every turn, the people of this neighborhood stepped in to support one another.

Books loaned out by the Zoar Sabbath School to neighborhood children in 1844. Courtesy the Leon Gardiner Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania

When banks denied loans to Black families, neighbors extended credit and trust. When schools were unequal, churches became classrooms. When national policies enforced slavery, ordinary people defied them-risking everything to open doors, help freedom seekers establish new lives, and care for the community as kin.

What they left behind is more than history, it’s instruction.

Perhaps we begin, like they did, by recognizing the trauma people carry and the courage it takes to heal. By remembering that many who fled enslavement had to leave behind loved ones, homes, and histories. And yet, they arrived in neighborhoods like Northern Liberties and found care waiting for them; quiet acts of welcome that said, 'You are not alone.'

Excerpt From Zora Neale Hurston's 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.' Jesse Redmon Fauset supported Hurston's rise through profiling her works in The Crisis. Hurston's photo appears courtesy Yale's Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Langston Hughes collection (see sources).

Today, as people around us face isolation, violence, and despair, we might ask: how can we be as empathetic, as present, as deeply human as this community was? We begin, like they did, by listening. By showing up. By building spaces where people feel seen, supported, and safe. By mothering freedom forward, together.

Sources:

All sources for this blog can be found here.