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Category: African American

An engraved portrait of Hannah Carson. She is seated, hands in lap around a small framed portrait (perhaps of her late husband or father). She is weaing a dark dress, buttoned to the collar, with her hair wrapped in a white scarf.

Hannah Carson: “Like a Fire in All My Bones”

Posted by: Neely Tucker

Nestled in the archives of the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection is a short, 1864 account of the remarkable life of Hannah Carson. “Glorying in Tribulation: A Brief Memoir of Hannah Carson, For Thirteen Years Deprived of the Use of All Her Limbs,” is testament to how a severely disabled Black woman became an inspiration to the Christian community, both white and black, in Philadelphia before and during the Civil War.