Felicia Blue, 94, an expert in African American genealogy in Philadelphia, died of congestive heart failure Jan. 22 at Stapeley in Germantown, a
continuing-care retirement community.
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In a 1999 Inquirer interview, Miss Blue recalled playing in the rowhouse at Ninth and South Streets where her maternal grandfather, Joseph T. Seth, operated his funeral home.
Not only was Seth the city’s most successful African American undertaker in the early 1900s, Miss Blue told the reporter, but Seth’s aunt Henrietta Bowers Duterte had become the city’s first female undertaker when her undertaker husband died in 1856.
Ramsey said Miss Blue contributed those and other memories to the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University.
Miss Blue also shared her genealogical research in Roger Lane’s 1991 book William Dorsey’s Philadelphia and Ours: On the Past and Future of the Black City in America.
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A viewing will be from 10 a.m. Tuesday at the Church of the Annunciation, Carpenter Lane at Lincoln Drive, followed by an 11 a.m. funeral. Burial will be in Eden Cemetery, Collingdale.
Read the full obituary in the January 30, 2009 edition of Philly.com