Obour Tanner

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Obour Tanner (c. 1750 – June 21, 1835) was an enslaved African American woman from Newport, Rhode Island. She is best known for her close connection to poet Phillis Wheatley and for helping Wheatley reach people in New England.

Early life
Tanner was enslaved by James Tanner, a Newport silversmith and slave trader who advertised enslaved Africans for sale in the 1750s. In 1768, Tanner was baptized and admitted as a servant of James Tanner into the First Congregational Church in Newport, a common practice at the time. Some scholars speculate that Tanner and Wheatley may have shared a voyage from Africa to America, though this is not proven. Tanner’s inclusion in church life and her early life in Newport place her at the center of the enslaved community there.

Correspondence with Phillis Wheatley
Tanner became one of Phillis Wheatley’s most important correspondents and the only known Wheatley correspondent of African descent. She acted as Wheatley’s agent in Newport and helped arrange Wheatley’s work, including Wheatley’s largest 1773 order of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. In 1863, six letters from Wheatley to Tanner were donated to the Massachusetts Historical Society by the wife of William Henry Beecher; no letters from Tanner to Wheatley have been found. Wheatley’s letters to Tanner show a close, ordinary friendship between two women navigating life in colonial New England and their shared ties to the African diaspora.

Later life and death
On November 4, 1790, Obour Tanner married Barra (Barry) Collins in Newport’s First Congregational Church, with Reverend Samuel Hopkins officiating. In 1809, following the example of Black mutual aid groups in Newport, Tanner helped found the African Female Benevolent Society, a literacy-focused organization for Black people. In 1863, the Massachusetts Historical Society received Tanner’s letters from Wheatley; in a note, Beecher described Tanner in her old age as a very small, very dark woman with a head full of white hair, respected in Newport.

Obour Tanner died in Newport on June 21, 1835. Her life shows the important links between enslaved people, religious communities, and the early African American networks that supported literacy, friendship, and mutual aid in colonial and early America.