Looking at the results of the 1847 Census, there were 18 families in Liberty Court with a total of 86 family members. The Lemmonds were paying $0.87 a week for one room. This “enclave” was home to poor working-class Black families who were paying $0.75-$1.00 a week for one room. “Liberty Court had been erected over a portion of the property along Tenth Street, previously owned by the First African Baptist Church (FABC), between 18.” Liberty Court eventually was demolished during the construction of the Vine Street Expressway extension (Rt. Liberty Court was an “African American enclave.” It was a small courtyard community of “band-box” houses squeezed in behind the larger residences that faced Ridge Avenue. Liberty Court was wedged between 10th Street, Vine Street, and Ridge Avenue in the northern part of the pre-consolidated city. The family did receive public aid in the form of firewood for their stove. Lemmond worked as a porter and his spouse was a day worker “when she can get it,” according to the census taker. They attended the Adelphia School and the Sixth & Lombard School. However, the children were born in the state. The adults, who formerly were enslaved, were not native to Pennsylvania. He lived with his spouse, who is unnamed, and two children between the ages of five and fifteen years, according to the 1837 Philadelphia African American Census. Thirty-eight-year-old John Lemmond died this date, May 25th, in 1848, due to the effects of alcoholism, and was buried at Bethel Burying Ground.
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