Feb 19: Brooklyn Black History Maker, Elizabeth A. Gloucester

Abolitionist, land owner and business operator, Elizabeth Gloucester was said to be the wealthiest Black woman in the nation at the time of her death in 1883. 

Elizabeth Amelia Gloucester was born as Elizabeth Parkhill in 1817 in Richmond, Virginia, but made her mark as a land owner and business woman in Brooklyn starting in the mid-1800s.

Her mother, a freed woman, died when Parkhill was young and by the age of six, she was sent to live with Rev. John Gloucester Sr., who lived in Philadelphia and founded the nation's first African American Presbyterian church. At age 21, Gloucester was sent to live with John Cook, a prominent Quaker family in Philadelphia as a domestic. It has been reported that Mrs. Cook taught Gloucester to save her wages in a bank account and taught her how to keep a bank book, according to an article in the paper Inter Ocean. 

Parkhill then reunited with her foster brother James Gloucester and married the reverend's youngest son in 1836. They eventually had eight children, two of whom died before adulthood. 

Gloucester ran a prosperous second-hand clothing store in Philadelphia. When the couple moved to New York around the 1840s, they first lived in Manhattan. Gloucester opened up another clothing store, as well as a furniture store. When her home on Hudson Street was bought for a handsome profit, Gloucester is said to have started her real estate empire. She acquired boarding homes, which often offered furnished rooms. She would eventually run 15 or more of them, including the Remsen House, an upscale boarding house in Brooklyn Heights. 

In the meantime, Mr. Gloucester founded the Siloam Presbyterian Church, a common meeting ground for abolitionists, in downtown Brooklyn. The family is thought to have moved to Brooklyn around 1855.