The Sanders Family of Philadelphia

Unsung History

When she was just fifteen years old, in 1830, Sarah Martha Sanders was sold to Richard Walpole Cogdell of Charleston, South Carolina. Within a year she was pregnant with his child, and just after she turned 17, Sarah Martha gave birth to Robert Sanders, the first of nine children she would bear to then 45-year-old Richard Cogdell. Because the legal status of the children followed that of the mother, these nine children were also Richard’s property. None of this was unusual for the time. The unusual turn happened in 1857 when Richard Cogdell, for unknown reasons, purchased a property in Philadelphia and immediately signed it over to his five living children with Sarah Martha, immediately moving there with them for good. Joining me to discuss this story is Dr. Lori Ginzberg, Professor Emeritus of History and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University and the author of Tangled Journeys: One Family's Story and the Making of American History.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Cordelia Sanders (1841-1879), age 15, Charleston,” P.2014.51.2, Stevens-Cogdell-Sanders-Venning-Chew Collection, Library Company of Philadelphia. The mid-episode music is “Satisfied Blues,” composed and performed by Lemuel Fowler, recorded in New York City on July 19, 1923; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox.

Additional Sources:

• Stevens-Cogdell-Sanders-Venning-Chew Collection, Library Company of Philadelphia.
• “Tracing Charleston’s History of Slavery, From a Burial Ground to a DNA Swab,” by Caroline Gutman and Emily Cochrane, The New York Times, April 11, 2024.
• “Old Slave Mart,” Charleston, South Carolina, National Park Service.
• “The Charleston Slave Badges,” National Museum of African American History & Culture.
• “Telling the complicated history of Charleston, South Carolina,” CBS News,” February 24, 2020.
• “Abolitionism,” by Richard S. Newman, The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.
• “Philadelphia and the Birth of the Nation’s First Abolitionist Society,” by Fidan Baycora, Historic America, April 14, 2021.
• “First American abolition society founded in Philadelphia,” History.com.
• “Big Idea 5: The Forten Family: Abolitionists and Reformers,” Museum of the American Revolution.

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