Rebecca Salome Foster
missionary/prison relief
Rebecca Salome Elliott Foster (October 24, 1848 - February 22, 1902) was an American woman from Alabama known as a City Missionary and prison relief worker in New York City. She became known as the "Tombs Angel" because of her ministry to suspects held before trial at The New York Halls of Justice and House of Detention (otherwise known as "The Tombs"). She expanded her work to include guidance, small financial support, job-seeking assistance, and other aid to newly released prisoners in an attempt to help them transition to the outside world. Foster's work predated most modern-day probation systems, including both the New York State Probation Commission (est. 1907) and the New York City Department of Probation.
Biography
She was born as Rebecca Salome Elliott on October 24, 1848, in Alabama, the daughter of planter John Howard Elliott and his wife Margaret Adele (née Blue). Her parents likely moved to New York before or during the war, perhaps having been one of those planter families who had close ties with people in the city through business.
During the last year of the Civil War, at the age of 19 Rebecca Elliot married Union colonel and attorney John Armstrong Foster (March 5, 1833 – February 11, 1890) on February 28, 1865, at Calvary Church in New York. It was designed in 1848 by James Renwick Jr. at 4th Avenue and 21st Street.
The public source identifies “Rebecca Salome Foster” as missionary/prison relief. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Rebecca, Salome and Foster.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rebecca Salome Foster” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.