Alice

Alice

Alice, known variously as Black Alice, Old Alice, and Alice of Dunk’s Ferry, was a native of Philadelphia and a slave, born to parents who were brought from Barbados. She is said to have been 116 at the time of her death in 1802.  She was celebrated in her time as a local historian, having seen Philadelphia develop from an early river settlement to the capital of a new nation, and she was an active member of the historic Christ Church. She likely sat for a portrait due to her respected position in the local community; in this way, the portrait itself is an indication of the heights to which an elderly, illiterate, enslaved woman could ascend. Alice’s portrait appears in the second volume of Eccentric Biography (Worcester, 1804), written by Isaiah Thomas, founder of the American Antiquarian Society. He mentions the following notable traits regarding Alice: her piety, skill as a historian and story teller, capability as a toll worker at a Delaware River ferry crossing, and, most significantly, her longevity. Thomas devotes much of Alice’s entry to tales of her extraordinary vitality, recalling events such as Alice riding horseback at the age of ninety-five and losing and regaining her eyesight as a centenarian.

Eccentric Biography is a dual volume set featuring noteworthy men and women in history. The men included in the first volume were selected for having “sufficiently striking” peculiarities, whereas their female counterparts were “remarkable for some extraordinary deviation from the generality of the sex.” This distinction demonstrates how being a woman was, in and of itself, a deviation from the norm. Furthermore, though both volumes include entries on people distinguished for their physical attributes, only the women’s volume contains a direct reference to such people on its title page.