Guide to the Sylvia Anna Magruder Papers
Available at the African American Museum & Library at Oakland (AAMLO)
Sylvia Anna Magruder (née Duncan) was born on July 1, 1880 in New Orleans, Louisiana the youngest daughter of Rev. Stephen Duncan and Sylvia Duncan. She graduated from New Orleans University and worked as a teacher and matron for ten years before marrying Rev. E.J. Magruder in 1908. The couple moved to California the following year, and in 1926 E.J. Magruder was appointed as the pastor at the First A.M.E. Church in San Francisco, California. Sylvia Anna Magruder served various civic and religious organizations in the San Francisco area, including the Y' Women of the San Francisco Buchanan St. YWCA and Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. She also worked for African American civil rights and advocated the hiring of the city’s first African American railway conductor, police officer, and social worker.
The Sylvia Anna Magruder Papers include correspondence, certificates, funeral and musical programs, newspaper clippings, and photographs documenting the life and volunteer activities of Sylvia Anna Magruder. The papers are arranged into two series: biographical material and photographs. Biographical material include correspondence from politicians and civic organizations thanking Magruder for her volunteer work, certificates from the Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, funeral and musical programs, and assorted newspaper clippings. Photographs in the collection are mostly portraits of Sylvia Anna Magruder and members of the Duncan family, photographs taken at Sylvia Anna Magruder’s birthday celebrations, and photographs related to Magruder's participation in the YWCA and Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
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