Adelphi School

The Adelphi School on "Wager Street" (a former name for Spring Street) was owned and run by The Philadelphia Association of Friends for the Instruction of Poor Children in 1847. The association was founded in 1807 by Thomas Scattergood, a Quaker itinerant minister, with 23 other Philadelphia Quakers. The association established a free school for poor White and African-American children in 1808, called the Adelphi School, on Pegg Street east of Second Street; Scattergood donated the land. The school house on Wager Street was built in 1831 and was two stories tall, 30 feet wide and 40 feet deep. The Adelphia School held two branches by 1847: a school for African-American girls and an infant school for African-American children of both sexes. The school adopted the Lancasterian method in which older students helped instruct younger pupils.

The Society of Friends (Quakers) took a census of the African-American population in Philadelphia in late 1847, to support their anti-slavery work. It estimated that about 64 percent (1,940 of 4,500) of African-American school-aged children in the city age five to fifteen were attending school. There were ten public or charity schools within Philadelphia in 1847. The Adelphi School on Wager Street was one, with about 150 pupils. Over 500 attended a public grammar school on Lombard Street, with around 200 each at a public primary school on Gaskill Street, the Shiloh Baptist Infant School on Clifton and Cedar Streets, and the Friends' School on Raspberry Street. A public primary school on Brown Street about 150 pupils enrolled. Roughly 75 students of color were enrolled in the Moral Reform School and in a public school on Oak Street in West Philadelphia. Another 30 attended the Bedford Street School; the school wasn't named for another ten students. Another 300 students were instructed in one of 20 private schools across the city. Of the over 1,300 school-aged children reported to not be attending school in 1847, many were employed at home, as common laborers, or were learning a trade. The survey lamented that many of the rest of the school-aged children were "probably growing up in idle and vicious habits."

The Board of Education of The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery commissioned another survey in the mid-1850s. Seven public schools, six charity schools, three orphan or reform schools, and 13 private instructors served about 2.300 African-American students in Philadelphia at that time. Approximately 1,000 of the students attended public schools; 750 were in charity schools; 200 attended orphan/reform schools, and 300 had private instructors. One of the charity schools, the Adelphi School, had 70 pupils in the girls' department, headed by Principal Anna M. Kite and employing one assistant. The principal for the 95 infant boys and girls was Catherine Shipley, with one assistant. Some of the students in the Adelphi School and another charity school, the Raspberry Street School, were nearly adults. The teachers at the Institute for Colored Youth and the private instructors were African-American; the rest of the teachers were White. Over 1,600 children between ages eight and eighteen were not attending school when the census was taken.

The street was still known as "Wager Street" between Twelfth and Thirteenth Street on the 1862 Smedley map from the Philadelphia Atlas. The 1875 Bromley Philadelphia Atlas shows a "Colored School" at the Adelphia School location on what had been renamed as "Winslow Street;" the building had been enlarged by adding a two-story mansard-roofed ell to the rear. The street was still named Winslow Street in 1895 on the Bromley Philadelphia Atlas map. The Quakers sold the school to a similar advocacy group in 1908 who operated the "Spring Street Settlement;" the street had been renamed by this date. The program taught practical skills and included social work, family counseling, boys' and girls' clubs, and Sunday School for the city's African-Americans until 1945. Fifteen other schools in Philadelphia educated African-American children by the early 1920s; illiteracy among the African-American population had decreased to about 30 percent.

Anonymous. "Racial Amity Aim of Workers Here." Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia, PA) February 3rd 1921. Night Extra ed, Financial sec, 13-13.

Bacon, Benjamin C. Statistics of the Colored People of Philadelphia. Edition 2nd. Philadelphia, PA. Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, 1859.

Bromley, W. Philadelphia Atlas. 1910. Digitized and georectified by Greater Philadephia GeoHistory Network.

Doebley, Carl E. NRHP Nomination of Adelphi School. National Register. Washington, DC. National Park Service, 1977.

Hills. Philadelphia. Map. 1808. Digitized and georectified by Greater Philadephia GeoHistory Network.

Hopkins, G. Philadelphia Atlas. 1875. Digitized and georectified by Greater Philadephia GeoHistory Network.

Kashatus, William C.. III. The Inner Light and Popular Enlightenment: Philadelphia Quakers and Charity Schooling, 1790 - 1820. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. CXVII, no.1/2, January/April, 87 - 116. Published April 1st 1994. JSTOR.

Society of Friends. A Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of People of Color of the City and Districts of Philadelphia. Philadelphia, PA. Kite & Walton, 1849.