A $10 painting found at Glenside thrift store is a clue to Philadelphia’s storied Black history

When Michiko Quinones saw the framed, oval-shaped 1864 watercolor of a tiny Black man peacefully fishing near a mill for the first time, she cried.

It wasn’t the serenity of the running water or easy sway of the branches that put Quinones in her feelings. Nor, was it the image of a Black man enjoying a moment of peace at a time when African Americans — both free and enslaved — were terrorized without recourse.

It was the artist’s blocky signature etched into stones painted along the imaginary river’s edge — W.H. Dorsey. W.H. Dorsey stands for William Henry Dorsey, a 19th century artist, collector, and curator of the American Negro Historical Society collection. Although historians know he was a prolific painter, they had never seen his work.

“There are so many Black artists from the 19th century whose work has been lost,” said Quinones whose 1838 Black Metropolis website is an interactive study of Philadelphia’s free Black society during the antebellum period.

“This painting is one more piece of evidence there was a thriving, Black community that existed in Philadelphia before the end of the Civil War. The buildings are there, but the artifacts have been scattered.”

The untitled watercolor, part of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania‘s current exhibit: “Voices, Visions, and Ventures: Recent Acquisitions,” is a gift of Andy Robbins, who stumbled upon the painting at New Life Thrift in Glenside back in 2023.

“What caught my eye was the frame,” said Robbins, a 50-year-old human resource executive. “It reminded me of something from the 1860s or ‘70s and the brushstrokes were just so well done.”

Scholars from W.E.B. Du Bois to Amy Jane Cohen, author of Black History and the Philadelphia Landscape, have documented the existence of a bustling Black community in Philadelphia during the 18th and 19th centuries. However, many of the era’s artifacts — paintings, silverware, furniture, and inventions — are presumed lost. Many were destroyed in fires set by white mobs intent on stopping Black progress. Others disappeared through centuries of moves and involuntary displacement.

Dorsey’s watercolors were featured in exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in the 1860s, said David Brigham, librarian and CEO of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Quinones found evidence that three of Dorsey’s paintings were shown alongside the work of Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first Black American artist to achieve international acclaim, at a Progressive Workingman’s Club Art Exhibition on South 11th Street in that time frame.

But art historians hadn’t eyeballed Dorsey’s art until Robbins' serendipitous find. Brigham is hopeful more of Dorsey’s paintings are out in the world.

“I went on the websites of four museums and the Smithsonian to see if I could find any more of Dorsey’s work,” Brigham said, his scholarly tone peppered with the excitement of a sleuth who just discovered the mystery-solving clue. “We are hoping people who have a Dorsey in their private collection will come forward.”

Robbins hails from a family of artists and people who like to thrift — his parents have been on the Antiques Roadshow. So, Robbins knows a thing or two about art.

While still at New Life, Robbins googled W.H. Dorsey, realized he’d discovered something valuable, and bought the piece for $10. He reached out to Quinones through 1838 Black Metropolis’ Instagram page and within days, was in conversation with the Historical Society.

“I knew this was bigger than me,” said Robbins who gifted the painting to the Historical Society without appraising it. “It deserved to be in a place where the public can see it.”

Dorsey’s life story is the fodder of epic American sagas, starting with his father, Thomas J. Dorsey, an enslaved man who escaped to Philadelphia from Maryland in the early 1800s.

The elder Dorsey was in Philly for only a few months when he was captured by slave trackers and sent back South. His friends, however, raised $1,000 — $32,000 in today’s money — to buy his freedom. Dorsey returned to Philadelphia.

Thomas J. Dorsey found work as a waiter and eventually started a prosperous catering company, joining the ranks of wealthy caterers: Robert Bogle, Henry Minton, and Henry Jones. Thomas J. Dorsey married Louise Tobias, a free Black woman, and the couple had three children: Sarah, Mary Louise, and William, born in 1837. The Dorsey family lived in a mansion at 1231 Locust Street, two blocks from where the Historical Society of Philadelphia stands today.

William Dorsey grew up wealthy, yet, according to an 1896 article in The Philadelphia Times, he worked as a messenger for Mayor William S. Stokely. He inherited a fortune when his father died. So, although he was a married father of six, he could indulge in his passions: collecting art and painting.

Dorsey was a meticulous scrapbooker, saving newspaper articles, minutes from church, abolitionist and Black social club meetings, and photographs dating to the Revolutionary War. Du Bois consulted Dorsey’s scrapbooks in researching The Philadelphia Negro.

Two rooms in Dorsey’s home on 206 Dean Street — now South Camac Street — were devoted, according to The Philadelphia Times article, to the “history, progress, and productions” of the African Race.

In 1897, Dorsey joined 15 prominent Black men to form the American Negro Historical Society. Other members included Robert Adger member of the Banneker Institute, and Henry L. Phillips, rector of the Church of the Crucifixion. The goal: to preserve the history of Black Americans.

“These men realized Black people were being erased from the cannon,” Quinones said, referring to Henry Simpson’s 1859 text The Lives of Eminent Philadelphians, Now Deceased. “That book did not include information about Mother Bethel founder, Richard Allen or sailmaker and Revolutionary War hero, James Forten.”

Dorsey served as the ANHS’s curator in its early years. Philadelphian and bibliophile Leon Gardiner, was its steward through the early 1900s. In 1934 Gardiner donated the Leon Gardiner Collection to the Historical Society. Today Dorsey’s scrapbooks belong to Cheyney University, but are housed at Penn State. A third grouping of the ANHS collection lives at Wellesley College.

In a perfect world, the American Negro Historical Society collection and Dorsey’s scrapbooks would reside in one space for quick, easy reference. Meanwhile, Brigham encourages history buffs to visit the newfound Dorsey watercolor — and the Leon Gardiner Collection for insight on Philadelphia’s Black history.

“Who knows what journey this watercolor made,” Brigham said.

“Someone bought it, owned it, and loved it. Now it’s here, a few blocks away from where Dorsey lived. It’s a mystery we might never solve, but we can celebrate.”

“Voices, Visions, & Ventures: Recent Acquisitions” at Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 1300 Locust St, Phila. Through Jan. 31. portal.hsp.org/exhibits