William Lewis and America's First Abolition Law

The elegant mansion on Strawberry Mansion Drive was the summer home of William Lewis, a Philadelphia judge and lawyer who left a mark on American legal history that is easy to overlook. Lewis was closely involved in the push for Pennsylvania's seventeen eighty Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, among the first abolition legislation enacted in America. The law did not end slavery overnight, but it established the principle that slavery could be legally dismantled, one generation at a time, and it gave other states a model to follow.

Lewis spent the rest of his career as counsel for the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, defending the rights of people freed under the act when slaveholders tried to reclaim them. Historic Strawberry Mansion, dating to the late seventeen hundreds, preserves both his memory and the era he helped reshape.