Background
Stephen was born a slave in Tennessee, his father paid $400 for Stephen"s freedom when he was 12 years of age.
pastor organizers founder of The First African
Stephen was born a slave in Tennessee, his father paid $400 for Stephen"s freedom when he was 12 years of age.
Gloucester was one of the four sons of John Gloucester. Between 1820 and 1840, Reverend Gloucester ran a school for black children and established a reading room for black adults. He organized the Leavitt Anti-Society and encouraged black churches to start similar groups, and was one of eight black pastors who founded the American and Foreign Anti-Society.
In 1838, he became a co-publisher and co-proprietor of the Colored American, but never fulfilled his plans to publish a Philadelphia edition
This schism with other activists led Gloucester to concentrate on his church, which moved into the white, Greek Revival-style building on the 800 block of Lombard upon its completion in 1848. Frederick Douglass is said to have called Gloucester "one of the vilest traitors to his race that ever lived."
In 1850, while on a church-related trip to Reading, Gloucester died of pneumonia.
Gloucester"s congregation buried him in a brick vault in the front of the building he had raised money to construct. There they placed a marble obelisk, inscribed:
Review
Stephen Henry Gloucester
Died May 21, 1850
Aged 48
Erected by the Congregation and Citizens among whom he labored, as an expression of esteem and affection for him – a devoted and successful minister of Jesus:Christ.
At some point since an 1895 photograph was taken, the large obelisk that marked the Gloucesters" grave went missing. In 1939, the congregation outgrew their original church, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, and moved to a historic former Quaker meeting house on Powelton Avenue in West Philadelphia. In the summer of 2008, a couple who had bought the property was in the process of converting the worn-out structure into a 10,000-square-foot (930 m2) luxury home they hope to sell for $4.95 million.
Workers hit a piece of slate which turned out to be his brick tomb.
On Friday November 21, 2008, his remains were foundation Mooney, an archeologist, said in an email Saturday, November 22, 2008, that all evidence at the site backs up the documentary evidence that the vault contained the remains of the Gloucesters and Winrow.
Forensic details are forthcoming.