Joseph Cassey

Joseph Cassey (c. 1789–1848) was a French West Indies-born American businessman, abolitionist activist and Underground Railroad conductor. He also worked as a barber, and as well as a wig maker, perfumer, and money-lender. He lived in the historic Cassey House in Society Hill, and was active in the African-American elite community in Philadelphia.

Early life Joseph Cassey was born in 1789 in French West Indies (in the present-day Caribbean region). He moved to Philadelphia some time before 1808. He was a member of African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, then located at 5th and Adelphi Streets.

In 1825, Cassey married Amy Matilda Williams from New York City, and they had 8 children. His father in-law was Peter Williams Jr., an African-American Methodist Episcopal priest and abolitionist.

Career Cassey's barber shop advertisement, 1832; reads "keeps a general assortment of perfumery, scented soaps, shaving apparatus, ladies work and dressing boxes, fine cutlery, fancy hair, pommade, 'huil antique', combs" alt=Cassey's barber shop advertisement, 1832; reads "keeps a general assortment of perfumery, scented soaps, shaving apparatus, ladies work and dressing boxes, fine cutlery, fancy hair, pommade, “huil antique”, combs" Cassey owned many Philadelphia rental properties, The 1820s and 1830s Cassey had worked as Treasurer to the Haytien Emigration Society. In 1818, he served as an officer at the Pennsylvania Augustine Society (also known as the Augustine Education Society of Pennsylvania), a group that supported African American schools, and which helped network him with other people active in resettlement. One of those Haitian resettlement supporters was Francis Webb, Secretary to the Haytien Emigration Society and the Philadelphia-based distributor for Freedom's Journal from 1827 until 1829. After Webb's death in 1829, the Cassey family remained close to Webb's children, including youngest son and future author, Frank J. Webb.

In 1831, Cassey attended as a delegate the First Annual Convention of the People of Color in Philadelphia, a colored convention with a focus on building and supporting African American education. home of Yale University, which met with resistance from the local townspeople.

Cassey became an early agent in Philadelphia of The Liberator, (1831–1865), an early abolitionist newspaper published by William Lloyd Garrison in Boston. Cassey actively funded and distributed the newspaper in Philadelphia, working alongside James Forten, John P. Burr, and James McCrummill to promote the newspaper. A significant number of the founders of Gilbert Lyceum had also helped found the earlier Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS) in 1833.

Cassey died on January 9, 1848, and is buried in the Saint James the Less Episcopal Churchyard in Philadelphia.