Honour for enslaved woman at Quaker house
Dinah saved Quaker-built home from fire set by British during American revolution
A historic house in the US is to honour an enslaved woman who saved the Quaker-built home from a fire set by the British during the American revolution. The woman, known as Dinah, was ‘inherited’ by Quaker William Logan from his wife Hannah Emlen and lived at Friend David Hickok’s ancestral house, Stenton. The house, now a museum, was built in c.1730 for William Logan’s father, James Logan, who was the secretary and deputy to William Penn.
Laura Keim, curator at Stenton, told the Friend: ‘When James Logan died, his son William inherited the house, buildings, and 511-acre plantation. William inherited an enslaved woman Dinah (who died in 1805) through his wife, not James Logan, as Dinah was Hannah Emlen’s dower property. William and Hannah died in 1776 and 1777 respectively, but Dinah stayed on at Stenton as a paid servant after they manumitted her in 1776. The story of her saving the house comes down via Deborah Norris Logan, who married the next son Dr George Logan.’
The memorial for Dinah has not yet been constructed, but according to Laura Kein, the design is complete and all the approvals are in place. She said: ‘We still have $100,000 to raise for completion, and Covid has slowed things down and shifted many funders’ priorities. We are still hoping we may yet get an audience with the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Initiative.’
The museum has also commissioned a new version of her story and created a video. Dinah came to the Logan’s from George Emlen’s plantation, which is thought to be in West Jersey.
David Hickok, who told the Friend about the story, said that his ancestor James Logan ran William Penn’s personal estate when Penn was in England, and sometimes all of Pennsylvania. He said: ‘Both… owned some slaves, as did most Quakers in Pennsylvania at that period. My entire Welsh, Irish and Scottish Quaker family back in the 1690s who emigrated with Penn, had slaves. But Penn had promised my ancestor James Logan to free his slaves when he died in his will as Logan and some other family were his executors. But he didn’t, maybe he forgot, so my ancestors James Logan and Isaac Norris had to sell William Penn’s slaves to settle the Penn estate in America for Penn’s awful sons, who had also robbed the Lenni Lenape Indians of their land after Penn passed away. During the American revolution one of James Logan’s slaves saved his estate from the British. We don’t know if he ever freed her, but we put up a memorial to her at the family museum in Philadelphia. We thought we should remember her by name.’
The Friend will run a feature on the story in coming weeks.
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