{"id":62758,"date":"2022-01-11T18:12:55","date_gmt":"2022-01-11T18:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=62758"},"modified":"2022-01-11T21:42:00","modified_gmt":"2022-01-11T21:42:00","slug":"overlooked-no-more-elizabeth-a-gloucester-richest-black-woman-and-ally-of-john-brown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=62758","title":{"rendered":"Overlooked No More: Elizabeth A. Gloucester, \u2018Richest\u2019 Black Woman and Ally of John Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"

Overlooked No More: Elizabeth A. Gloucester, \u2018Richest\u2019 Black Woman and Ally of John Brown<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2019-09-18<\/p>\n

Steve Bell<\/strong><\/a>, Senior Staff Editor<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Elizabeth Gloucester<\/a> amassed a fortune from running more than 15 boardinghouses<\/a>, including the Remsen House<\/a> in Brooklyn<\/a>, which drew an elite clientele.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.<\/em><\/p>\n

She ran boardinghouses<\/a> whose lodgers included members of New York\u2019s<\/a> elite, raised money for an orphan asylum and was active in the abolitionists\u2019<\/a> cause.<\/em><\/p>\n

With a fortune built largely from operating boarding homes in Brooklyn<\/a> and beyond, Elizabeth A. Gloucester<\/a> was considered by many to be the richest black woman in America<\/a> at her death at age 66 on Aug. 9, 1883.<\/p>\n

Attending her funeral was \u201ca congregation of people such as has seldom come together,\u201d The Brooklyn Daily Eagle<\/em><\/a> reported, made up of \u201crichly dressed white ladies, fashionably attired gentlemen and a number of well-known colored people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether her fortune of about $300,000 (the equivalent of about $7 million today) actually made her the nation\u2019s wealthiest black woman may be impossible to prove. Some white women were much richer; the financial whiz Hetty Green<\/a> was then building a net worth that might rival or exceed that held by President Trump<\/a> today.<\/p>\n

But Gloucester was notable for more than just her money. She was linked \u2014 for a time dangerously so \u2014 to the antislavery firebrand John Brown<\/a>, whom some blamed for leading the nation into the Civil War<\/a>. She also led efforts to raise money for New York\u2019s Colored Orphan Asylum<\/a>, which would be set afire in the deadly draft riots of 1863. In her final year she even managed to land a cameo role in a high-society scandal that made headlines across the country…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She ran boardinghouses whose lodgers included members of New York\u2019s elite, raised money for an orphan asylum and was active in the abolitionists\u2019 cause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,459,8,6940,20],"tags":[6675,32746,32748,32747,32761,2711,596,2640,32749,2327],"class_list":["post-62758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-history","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-brooklyn","tag-colored-orphan-asylum","tag-elizabeth-a-gloucester","tag-elizabeth-gloucester","tag-john-brown","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-times","tag-steve-bell","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62758"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62770,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62758\/revisions\/62770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}