Philadelphia will memorialize Dinah, an African American woman once enslaved by the property’s owners. Why? She saved Stenton House—a historic landmark built in the early 18th century for colonial statesman James Logan—from being burned down.
Freed from slavery in 1776, just months before the Declaration of Independence was signed, Dinah took a paid job as a housekeeper at Stenton. The following fall, she encountered two British soldiers who told her that they intended to set the building ablaze. After the pair retreated to the adjacent barn to gather kindling, Dinah alerted a British officer who had stopped by the residence in search of deserters to the would-be arsonists’ presence. The soldiers were promptly arrested.
Despite the overwhelming accounts and evidences that credit Dinah for saving the Logan's property, several omit her name, and refers to her only as an “old Negroe servant.”
The descriptors that adorned a bronze plaque at Stenton, installed in 1912 to honor Dinah’s contribution, also memorialized her poorly, referring to her as a “faithful colored caretaker.” The stone marker was later removed during renovations. (As of May 1, Dinah remains conspicuously absent from the Wikipedia entry on Stenton.)
Now, centuries after her still-largely anonymous act of bravery, Dinah is finally getting her due, reports Karen Chernick for Atlas Obscura. In collaboration with Germantown-based artist Karyn Olivier, curators at the Stenton House—which has since been converted into a museum—plan to install a proper commemoration of Dinah on its grounds.
Image Courtesy of Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum