Bustill family

The Bustill family is a prominent American family of largely African, European and Lenape Native American descent. The family has included artists, educators, journalists and activists, both against slavery and against Jim Crow.

History

Born in Burlington, New Jersey on February 2, 1732, Cyrus Bustill was a son of the Quaker lawyer Samuel Bustill and Parthenia, a woman of African descent who was held in bondage by him. When Samuel Bustill died in 1742, his legal widow, Grace Bustill, subsequently arranged for the sale of Cyrus Bustill to fellow Quaker Thomas Prior with the understanding that Prior would allow Cyrus to train and earn enough money as an apprentice baker in order to purchase his freedom.
Cyrus would go on to either purchase his freedom or receive manumission at an indeterminate date, then become a businessman and landowner in his own right thereafter. At the time of his death in 1806, he was a leading member of the African-American upper class of Philadelphia.
Cyrus and his wife, the mixed race Elizabeth Morey, had eight children. One of them was the abolitionist and feminist advocate Grace Douglass.
Other notable descendants of Cyrus and Elizabeth Morey Bustill include the performer and activist Paul Robeson, the artist David Bustill Bowser, the educator, abolitionist and writer Sarah Mapps Douglass, the journalist and activist Gertrude Bustill Mossell, and the artist and activist Robert Douglass Jr.