The week I spent in Philadelphia in early January, thanks to the College of Physicians’ and Drexel University’s support through the Foundation for the History of Women in Medicine, was valuable for me in many ways, and I felt honored to receive the assistance. I more than accomplished my goal of exploring African American Philadelphia, 1884-88 and what a young medical student may have encountered, and although some leads are yet to be followed, I believe I have made significant discoveries for her story.

I understood from Ed Morman, CPP Librarian, that for this particular grant, there was not a requirement to stay at the CPP Library and archives to do my research, so I immediately made arrangements with Barbara Williams, Archivist at Drexel, to view her collections. Both Ed and Richard Fraser offered any assistance that might be useful, but I think we all realized that for this particular project, I would need to go elsewhere. I had forwarded to Barbara numbers of series I wanted to look at, that I’d found on their online finding aids. Barbara was extremely helpful, first in helping me find my way to its current home, the defunct Women’s Hospital, a shuttle ride away from a branch campus of the University. Once I arrived there, mid-morning of Tuesday, Jan. 3rd, I discovered that Barbara had pulled nearly all the boxes I would need and brought them to the Archives research reading room, from an offsite storage area. This was a great expediency in view of the short time I had to work there.

Joanne Grossman, Director of the Archives, and the whole archives staff were very friendly, and having just lost the one coffee drinker among them from a grant having been completed, tried hard to find a way for me to have some coffee! Even though Barbara had pulled all the records I’d asked for, she kept looking for any other materials that would possibly have any interest for me. I found surprisingly few references to Verina Harris, which in itself was a discovery worthy of note, but requested photocopies of dozens of items that I thought might relate in some way to the project, and everything that had some mention of her, including minutes of WCP board meetings, class lists, grade lists, scholarship statements and some materials on classmates.

Barbara also suggested that I try Margaret Jerrido at the Urban Archives at Temple. I learned from Margaret that she had done research on the African American graduates of WMCP and, like me, had not been able to document the Mississippi years of Verina Harris. I was referred more than once to the Blockson Collection at Temple University and sought reference to the Archives of the Berean School, where Caroline Still Anderson worked for 32 years as assistant principle, a mentor to Verina Harris Morton Jones.

On Wednesday, I briefly visited the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, then the Free Library of Philadelphia on 19th Street, about fifteen minutes’ walk north. I was pleasantly surprised to find in the Social Science Department at the Free Library, the local history section, and a helpful young librarian who brought out two reference books that he thought I should see: Lane, Roger, William Dorsey’s Philadelphia and Ours: on the Past and Future of the Black City in America, (NY: OUP, 1991) and Saunders, John A. 100 Years after Emancipation (History of the Philadelphia Negro, 1787-1963), [1963?] He also suggested I try the Library Company, Emma Lapsansky at Haverford, the Historical Society of PA, and the newspaper room at the Free Library. I used the African American Newspaper Directory by Dankey to locate Philadelphia newspapers during my time frame of 1884-88 and discovered, to my great disappointment, that the primary African American newspaper, The Philadelphia Tribune, published its first issues in 1884 but they were nowhere to be found. The Free Library directed me to the Philadelphia Tribune office, and the Tribune office staff person said she had done some searching once for the first issues, and if I ever came across them would appreciate if I let her know!

Emma Lapsansky was out of the country at the time of my visit to Philadelphia, but kindly answered by e-mail a few weeks later, confirming the value of the Lane book to my research.

At the Historical Society of PA, I was able to locate on microfilm the Christian Recorder, the national organ of the A.M.E. church published in Philadelphia, the only newspaper of the period that I could determine that they had. Although it was very rich in references about many of the names with which I’ve become familiar as peers and associates of Verina Harris Morton Jones, including her brother-in-law T. McKants Stewart, I was again most surprised to find barely any mention of Verina Harris, and when I ultimately did it was the briefest, oddest piece. In an article that was attempting to recruit more young women to the nursing field, one paragraph was devoted to African American women doctors, and her name was mentioned along with Halle Tanner, and Jesse Bennet, Morton Jones’ classmate. But the REAL problem cited in the article was not enough women going into nursing!! One could conclude that Verina Harris may have disassociated herself from the A.M.E. Church by this time as one possible explanation of why so little mention of her there.
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The archivist at the Historical Society claimed that the Library Company was primarily books, (a fact which I later came to doubt after a communication from Emily Lapsansky), so I figured it wasn’t a high priority.

On Friday night I visited the Afro American museum where a fundraising benefit was taking place and was able to speak briefly with Diane Turner, curator. She indicated that she would be seeing some descendants of one of the well-known families from the 1880s associated with the Berean School later that night, gave me her card, and invited me to be in touch with her on e-mail about my research project.

On Saturday, January 7th, my last morning in Philadelphia, I headed back to the Free Library, spending over an hour of productive time taking notes from the Lane book.

While I did not uncover a wealth of material on my subject, nevertheless the things I learned proved valuable to furthering my project. My time did not allow me to pursue all the leads, and I will now need to weigh pursuit of these leads with pragmatism about continuing the work. I am deeply grateful to have been afforded this opportunity by the Foundation for the History of Women in Medicine.

Susan Rishworth
Susan Rishworth