Frank J. Webb

Frank J. Webb (1828–1894) was an African-American novelist, poet, and essayist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His novel, The Garies and Their Friends (1857), was the second novel by an African American to be published and the first to portray the daily lives of free blacks in the North. It was published in London and did not receive much attention in the United States until new editions were published in 1969 and 1997.

Although he did not publish another novel, Webb had poems and articles, and two novellas published in 1870 in The New Era, based in Washington, DC; the weekly had been taken over by Frederick Douglass as publisher. Webb is not known to have published any other works.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on March 21, 1828, Francis "Frank" Johnson Webb grew up in the city’s vibrant community of free African Americans.

His family members – father Francis Webb (1788-1829), mother Louisa Burr (c.1785-1878), brother John (1823-1904), and sisters Elizabeth (1818-1888), Ann (1820-1884), and Mary (1824-1826) -- were among thousands who had returned to the United States in 1826 after the failed two-year Haitian emigration experiment. While in Port au Platt, Francis Webb had served as secretary on the Board of Instruction of a joint Episcopal-Presbyterian church school. This role followed naturally on his previous service in Philadelphia as an elder in the First African Presbyterian Church, a parishioner at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, a founding member of the Pennsylvania Augustine Education Society formed in 1818, and secretary of the Haytien Emigration Society organized in 1824. Upon his return to Philadelphia, Francis Webb worked as the Philadelphia distribution agent for Freedom’s Journal from 1827 to 1829. In 1829—a year after his youngest child, Frank J. Webb, was born—Francis Webb died of unknown causes.

Frank J. Webb’s mother, Louisa Burr, was the illegitimate daughter of former U.S. Vice President, Aaron Burr —and sister of John (Jean) Pierre Burr, a prominent activist in Philadelphia’s black community. The papers of Louisa Burr Webb’s granddaughter—held in the Christian Fleetwood Papers at the Library of Congress—include photographs identifying John Pierre Burr’s daughter and granddaughters as maternal cousins, and confirming Louisa’ s maiden name as Burr. Louisa Burr Webb worked most of her life for Mrs. Elizabeth Powel Francis Fisher, a prominent Philadelphia society matron closely connected to the oldest Philadelphia families, and mother of prominent Philadelphia businessman, Joshua Francis Fisher. After Francis Webb’s death, Louisa remarried and became Louisa Darius.

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