"Aaron Albert Mossell 2.(1863-February 1,1951)

Was the first African American to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the father of Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander.He was born in Hamilton,Canada in 1863 the youngest of six children.His parents had moved with their first three children from Maryland to Hamilton,Ontario in the 1850s to escape racial discrimination.His father Aaron Albert Mossell 1(1824-?),the grandson of slaves,became a brickmaker and in Hamilton went to school to become literate.He set up his own business.His mother Eliza Bowers was a free black from Baltimore whose family had been deported to Trinidad when she was a child.She returned later and met Aaron Senior there.By 1870 the family had returned to the United States and lived in Lockport,New York.Aaron senior had a brickmaking business and the children integrated the public school.Aaron graduated from Lincoln University as an undergraduate.He earned his law degree,at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1888,the first African American to do so.He married Mary Louisa Tanner in Philadelphia.They had three children:Aaron Albert Tanner 3 (1893-1959),became a became a pharmacist in Philadelphia.Elizabeth Mossell Anderson (1894-1975),became Dean of Women at Virgina State College and later at Wilberforce University in Ohio.Sadie Tanner Mossell (1898-1985)graduated from Penn State and served as an editor of the Law Review,became a practing lawyer,Assistant City Solicitor and activist on civil rights issues.Aaron separated from his wife and family when Sadie was about a year old,and the couple eventually divorced.He later moved to Cardiff,Whales where he he was living by the 1930s and remained the rest of his life.Aaron practiced law with two African-American partners in offices in the Witherspoon Building.He was solicitor of the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital,where his brother Nathan was medical director.He was said to defended some African-American men after the racial riots of 1917-1919 Philadelphia.