This poem, entitled "On the Death of the rev' d Dr. Sewall," and dated 1769, is an elegy to her pastor, Joseph Sewall (1688-1769), minister for fifty-six years at Boston's Old South Church.
Phillis Wheatley Peters (c. 1753-1784) was the first Black woman poet in America. She was brought as an enslaved African in about 1761 to Boston, Mass., where she was purchased by John Wheatley. Educated in the Wheatley household, first by Wheatley's wife Susannah and later by his daughter Mary, Phillis began writing poems in her early teens. It was through her published poetry that she became a member of Boston's literati and travelled briefly to England, returning in 1773 during Mrs. Wheatley's final illness. She married John Peters in 1778. She and her only surviving child died impoverished in December 1784.