Grand United Order Odd Fellows America (Philadelphia: Hunter, 1843). Chromolithograph, hand-colored. Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

 

“Godver, John,” McElroy’s Philadelphia City Directory (Philadelphia: E. C. & J. Biddle & Co., 1863).

 

David B. Bowser (1820-1900) was a prominent African-American ornamental artist and social activist who specialized in signs, banners, paraphernalia, and portraiture. Major commissions included volunteer firefighter apparel and equipment, Civil War pictorial banners, and Grand United Order of Odd Fellows regalia, probably including the design for this certificate copyrighted by and inscribed to Bowser. Twenty years later, John Godver (b. ca. 1841), sometimes Godber, would be the only lithographer identified as non-white in 19th-century city directories.

 

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