Alice, also known as “black Alice” or “Alice of Dunk’s Ferry,” lived as a slave in Philadelphia for the entirety of her 116 years. This image is an engraving, probably part of a larger book by Thomas Isaiah, “Memoirs of Remarkable Female Characters, Ancient and Modern” or more commonly known as “Eccentric Biography,” published in 1804. Aside from the extraordinarily long life that marked her notable in the eyes of Thomas, Alice led a relatively normal life for a Philadelphia slave. For the majority of her life, Alice collected tolls to cross the river on Dunk’s Ferry, located in the present day at the end of Dunk’s Ferry Road on the Delaware River near Bristol. However, she is remembered as one of Philadelphia’s first oral historians.

According to “They Carried Us: The Social Impact of Philadelphia’s Black Women Leaders”, by Allener M. Baker-Rogers and Fasaha M. Tray, while Alice never gained her freedom, she may have used her post as a trusted ferry tollwoman to help assist fugitives escape to freedom.

In her time Alice kept the chronicle of Philadelphia’s persons, places, and events in her memory. She lived from 1686 until 1802 and during her lifetime saw the transformation of Philadelphia from a rural forest, to a burgeoning metropolis, to a revolutionary hotbed, to the young capital of a new nation. It is likely that many of the children and grandchildren of Philadelphia’s first settlers sought out Alice to hear stories of their ancestors and the events that took place around them. However, for many years that followed, voices like Alice’s were far less prominent in history than those of men such as William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington.