Death Notice for Phillis Peters, Formerly Phillis Wheatley, Printed in the Massachusetts Centinel, Wednesday, December 8, 1784 [No. 23, Vol. 11]

[Wheatley, Phillis]. Death Notice for Phillis Peters, Formerly Phillis Wheatley, Printed in the Massachusetts Centinel, Wednesday, December 8, 1784 [No. 23, Vol. 11]. [Boston]: Warden & Russell, December 8, 1784. FIRST EDITION. Bifolium, 10-3/8" x 16-1/8"; trimmed at the top edge effecting some text but none of the death notice. [4] pp. "Phillis Wheatley Peters is broadly recognized as the first African American woman and only the third American woman to publish a book of poems. . . . [H]er first collection of poems, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral--[was] the first book written by an enslaved Black woman in America. It included a forward by John Hancock and other Boston notables--as well as a portrait of Wheatley--all designed to prove that the work was indeed written by a Black woman. . . . In 1778, Wheatley married John Peters, a free black man from Boston with whom she had three children, though none survived. Efforts to publish a second book of poems failed. To support her family, she worked as a scrubwoman in a boardinghouse while continuing to write poetry. Wheatley died in December 1784, due to complications from childbirth. In addition to making an important contribution to American literature, Wheatley's literary and artistic talents helped show that African Americans were equally capable, creative, intelligent human beings who benefited from an education." Chicago - Michals, Debra. "Phillis Wheatley." National Women's History Museum. 2015.
Phillis Peters nee Phillis Wheatley was buried without a headstone, with only a handful of newspaper notices to mark her death. The one offered in this listing is the earliest recorded by William H. Robinson in Phillis Wheatley and Her Writings, reads: "Last Lord's day died Phillis Peters, formerly Phillis Wheatley, known to the literary world by her celebrated miscellaneous Poems." Chipped at the gutter, likely from previously being bound with other issues of The Massachusetts Centinel; preserved in a modern half blue morocco blue cloth box. The condition of the newspaper is VERY GOOD.
At the time of this writing, no copies of any of Wheatley's death notices are recorded at auction by Rare Book Hub. EXCEEDINGLY RARE # 001201