The Phillis Wheatley Cottage Marker Celebration

The Story of Phillis Wheatley

A 7-year old African girl arrived in America in 1761 on a slave ship and was purchased by John and Susanna Wheatley of Boston, who named her Phillis, educated her with their children and freed her before she was 20. A freed slave and 18th-century poet, Phillis Wheatley was one of the earliest black poets in America and one of the few women to have anything published in the 18th century. Today, her name is found on many college dormitories and YWCAs across the United States.

The Phillis Wheatley Cottage was created in the 1890s to provide lodging for African-American workers at Chautauqua Institution. Referred to as the colored boarding house, it stood at 23 Crescent in 1906. In 1939 the house was moved close to what is now Fletcher Music Hall. By the 1940s guests at the Wheatley Cottage contributed funds to Old First Night. The Wheatley Cottage was closed in 1965 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

On Being Brought from Africa to America

by Phillis Wheatley

‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

“Their colour is a diabolic die.”

Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,

May be refin’d and join th’ angelic train