American-Canadian anti-slavery campaigner, suffragist, and 1st African-American newspaper publisher (“The Provincial Freeman”), Mary Anne Shadd was born in Wilmington, Delaware. Her parents, Harriet Burton (Parnell) and Abraham Shadd were free African-Americans. Abraham was descended from a Hessian soldier who fought for the British in the French and Indian War. Wounded, he was cared for by two African-American women and married into the family.
The Shadd family home was a stop on the underground railroad. When it became illegal to educate blacks in Delaware, the family moved to Pennsylvania and, after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, moved to Canada.
She was the first black woman publisher in North America and the first woman publisher in Canada. She was also the second black woman to attend law school in the US. Mary Shadd edited The Provincial Freeman, established in 1853. Published weekly in southern Ontario, it advocated equality, integration, and self-education for black people in Canada and the United States. She died in 1893 from stomach cancer.
Her first named census is the U.S. Census of 1850 for Montgomery County PA. Prior censuses listed only the name of the head of the household. This page of the census is very light and difficult to read.
Click on the census for a larger view.
Sources
- Wikipedia.org
- Ancestry.com
- Onthisday.com
- Picryl.com
- Youtube.com
Famous People and Their First Census 