Francis Johnson Webb, an American author, poet, and essayist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His work, The Garies and Their Friends (1857), was the second novel published by an African American, and the first to depict the daily lives of free blacks in the North. Frank Webb was born in Philadelphia on March 21, 1828. He was the fifth and youngest child of Francis Webb (1788-1829) and Louisa Burr Webb. His maternal grandfather, former US Vice President Aaron Burr, was confirmed by DNA testing in 2018. Webb had one brother, John (1823-1904), and three sisters: Elizabeth (1818-1888), Ann (1820-1884), and Mary (1824-1826). Webb's mother, Louisa Charlotte Burr, was Aaron Burr's daughter. She and her brother John Pierre Burr, a well-known black activist in Philadelphia, were born to an East Indian woman who worked as a governess in Burr's family. Louisa Burr Webb spent the majority of her life working for Mrs. Elizabeth Powel Francis Fisher, a renowned Philadelphia society matron with strong ties to the city's oldest families and the mother of prominent Philadelphia businessman Joshua Francis Fisher. After Francis Webb died, Louisa remarried and changed her name to Louisa Darius.
