This obituary of Philip White is in the Rhoda Freeman Collection at the Schomburg Center and the page it's pasted on is from the same the unidentified scrapbook as that of Peter Guignon. It appeared in the February 19, 1891 issue of the New York Age. The obituary states that Philip was born sixty-eight years ago which would mean in 1823. All it tells us about his parents is that “his father died when he was quite young and he was thrown upon his own resources.”

I found a lot more information about Philip and his family in a eulogy written by his longtime friend George Downing. According to Downing, Philip’s father, Thomas White, came from northern England, while his mother, Elizabeth Steele, was from Jamaica. I don’t know whether Elizabeth was born a slave or free; where she and Thomas White met; whether they were married; or how they ended up in the United States.

Significantly, however, and in contrast to most interracial relationships of the period, the White family lived as an intact household. The 1830 census lists them as living in Hoboken, New Jersey. There were six children, four daughters and two sons. By 1832 the family had moved to Manhattan where, according to the city directory, Thomas ran a grocery store at 102 Gold Street, on the corner of Frankfort Street, the very same location where Philip would estabish his drugstore some fifteen years later.

I’ve found virtually no information about Philip’s siblings. The 1850 census indicates that in addition to his mother, a sister, Sarah, lived with him. He had another sister, Mary, who married a man by the name of Richard Thompson.

Fascinatingly, the poems pasted to the left of Philip’s obituary on the scrapbook page all refer to the things Philip cared about most during his lifetime. "Why Johnny Failed, Good for a Boy to Read" underscores Philip’s commitment to education. "To Trinity" pays homage to the institution out of which his own church, St. Philips, grew. "References” praises the comforts of home life. A final poem, “If Only We Understood,” hints mysteriously at emotional burdens Philip took with him to the grave. The second stanza reads:

"Ah! We judge each other harshly,
Knowing not life’s hidden force;
Knowing not the fount of action
Is less turbid at its source
Seeing not amid the evil
All the golden grains of good
And we’d live each other better
If we only understood."

I found this obituary of Peter Guignon in the Rhoda Freeman Collection at the Schomburg Center. It was pasted on a page taken from a scrapbook whose owner remains unidentified. The clipping is undated but the obituary appeared in the January 31, 1885 issue of the New York Freeman. It was written by Peter's longtime friend Alexander Crummell and is poignant for the intimate details it provides of the deceased's life and character. Crummell’s obituary is fascinating for what it does not tell us about Peter’s background. It notes simply that his mother came from the West Indies to New York City where her only child was born in 18[13]. That comment alone suggested to me that his mother was black (or mulatto). Crummell does not mention a father, but a short obituary notice in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle stated that both of his parents came from Haiti.

Over time, I've gathered additional pieces of the puzzle but have not been able to solve it altogether. Here are my two possibilities:

1) Peter's father was a white man. City directories of the 1820s list both a Joseph and a James Guignon as free white males. In addition, I discovered documents signed by both a Pierre and a Jacques Guignon in the St. Peter's Catholic Church archives. Members of the Berard family were co-signatories to one of the documents, a marriage ban. The Berards were well-known grand blanc slaveholders who fled Haiti at the time of the revolution and arrived in New York in the late 1790s. It's likely that the two families moved in the same social circle. So it's possible that Peter's father was one of the Guignons who signed the documents. That would make him the "white Haitian" ancestor to whom my aunt referred.

2) Peter's father was a mulatto. A unknown cousin recently found me online and we've had a lot of telephone conversations about our ancestors. According to her, Peter's father was named Pierre and he left Haiti in 1803 at the time of the revolution. So it's quite likely that he is the Pierre Guignon who signed the marriage ban. My cousin also possesses his naturalization papers which are dated 1809. But these papers make no mention of his race. All she has after that are family comments that seem as fuzzy as those from my aunt: that Pierre was the son of a slaveholder, and a very light skinned mulatto as was his wife. But my cousin has no idea what happened to Pierre after he got to New York. So once again I'm left with questions. Why did Crummell not mention Pierre? Did Pierre die early? Leave the city? Leave his family and pass for white? And would the Berards have co-signed a marriage ban with a mulatto man? I simply don't know.