Born: 1817, United States
Died: 23 December 1903
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Henrietta Bowers
Believed to have been the first female undertaker in the modern United States, Henrietta Smith Bowers Duterte was one of 13 children in her family. She grew up in Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward, among the city’s African-American elite. Trained as a tailor, Bowers made garments for the middle and upper classes before marrying Francis Duterte, a Haitian-born coffin maker, abolitionist and women’s rights supporter, when she was 35 in 1852. Although she bore several children, none survived infancy and Francis died only a few years later in 1858. At this point, she defied convention and took over her husband’s company and began doing business in her own name, becoming the first undertaker in the city and possibly the country.
An abolitionist in her own right, Duterte worked with the Underground Railroad, hiding escaped African-Americans in coffins or disguising them as members of funeral processions to safeguard their passage through Philadelphia. The daughter of a church sexton, she also supported the AME Church of St. Thomas financially, funded Stephen Smith‘s Philadelphia Home for Aged and Infirmed Colored Persons and helped found the Freedman’s Aid Society Fair to support formerly enslaved people in Tennessee. By the time of her death in 1903, her company was one of the most successful African-American-owned businesses in Philadelphia, serving both African-American and white customers and earning around $8,000 per year.