Fanny M. Jackson Coppin

London Grove Township, PA · est. 2008

Born on this Chester County land in 1813, Ann Preston broke barrier after barrier in a world that barred women from medicine. A graduate of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, she became its dean in 1865 — the first American woman to hold such a post — and in 1860 founded the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia, later adding one of the nation's earliest nurses' training schools. A Quaker, she was also an abolitionist tied to the Underground Railroad.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1992

Laura Wheeler Waring built her career as a portrait painter in an era when few Black women found a place in the American art world. Trained in Philadelphia and in France, she captured the faces of leading African Americans and led the art department at Cheyney State College, shaping generations of students. Her portraits now hang in the National Portrait Gallery and other major collections.

West Chester, PA · est. 1995

Star of the West, Tent No. Six was a local chapter of the United Order of Tents, an African American women's mutual-aid and community service organization. Chartered in 1865 as the Civil War closed, it belonged to the J. R. Giddings and Jollifee Union, a benevolent society founded in 1847 and named for the abolitionist Congressman Joshua Giddings and his law partner. Groups like this provided care for the sick, burials for the dead, and support networks for Black communities in an era when few other institutions would.

Pocopson Township, PA · est. 2011

Eusebius Barnard was a Chester County Quaker who took the radical path of the Progressive Friends, embracing temperance, women's equality, and the abolition of slavery. His farm became a station on the Underground Railroad, where he and his family sheltered freedom seekers and guided them toward the next safe house — dangerous work in the tense decades before the Civil War. He helped found the Longwood Progressive Meeting, a hub of reform in southeastern Pennsylvania.