Delaware’s forgotten daughter

Remembering Mary Ann Shadd Cary’s accomplishments

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Lora Bilton Englehart is a graduate of Caesar Rodney High School and the University of Delaware. She has been researching the Shadd family since 1996 and has met many Shadd descendants in the U.S. and Canada. She is a freelance writer and speaker who lives in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.

Oct. 9, 2023, marks the 200th birthday of one of Delaware’s most accomplished natives. Leading up to this milestone, expect to find library, museum, school and historical society displays, as well as lectures and panel discussions, dedicated to learning more about Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-93) and her equally impressive forebearers.

Mary Ann once declared, “I’d rather wear out than rust out.” She championed numerous causes for her people, never stopping until her death. Mary Ann was a significant influence on the intellectual life of the United States and Canada in the 1800s. She gave a human face to her favorite motto, “Self-reliance is the true road to freedom.”

Mary Ann’s paternal line in America goes back to 1755, two decades before the founding of our nation. Hans Schad, a Hessian mercenary who fought with Gen. Edward Braddock in the French and Indian War, was wounded and sent to recuperate in the home of a free Black woman, Elizabeth Jackson, in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The soldier and Elizabeth’s daughter, also named Elizabeth, married and had two sons. The young family soon moved across the Pennsylvania border, to Millcreek Hundred and then Wilmington. The family name changed to Shadd before grandson Abraham became a successful businessman, landowner, leader of the free Black community, abolitionist and active participant of the Underground Railroad.

Despite all the rights and privileges Abraham sought for his family, his success was limited because of his race. In 1833, Abraham moved with his family north to West Chester, Pennsylvania, populated by more fair-minded Quakers. There, he reestablished himself as a businessman, abolitionist and community leader. His children were finally able to go to school. Mary Ann, the first of the Shadds’ 13 children, studied with Quaker teacher Phoebe Darlington. Once her education was complete, Mary Ann moved away from home to teach, write blunt newspaper articles on issues affecting Blacks and lecture across the country. In the years leading up to the Civil War, restrictions on free Blacks increased. The Shadds chafed under this treatment and the fear that they might be kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South. They made the difficult decision to move once again.

The Shadds joined a community of Black American expatriates just over the border from Detroit in Toronto. From her new home, Mary Ann wrote a pamphlet entitled “Notes of Canada West” in 1852, delineating the advantages of living in Canada and dispelling rumors of harsh weather and unfriendly treatment of Blacks. Mary Ann opened a school for White and Black children and distinguished herself as the first Black female editor and publisher of a newspaper on the North American continent in 1854. Sadly, the Provincial Freeman folded after four years. She was, by this time, a widow with two small children, Sarah and Linton.

Mary Ann felt her best opportunity to provide for her family would be in Washington, D.C. She settled there in 1857 and resumed teaching and served as a school principal. During these Reconstruction years, she also threw herself into public speaking and writing, concentrating on the women’s suffrage movement and Blacks’ equal access to education and employment. She entered Howard University’s first law school class — the only female — in 1869. She finally earned her law degree at the age of 60 and used her knowledge to help others rather than to bolster her bank account.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary — abolitionist, reformer, suffragist, teacher, journalist, editor, orator, lawyer, wife and mother — is included in both the Delaware Women’s Hall of Fame and the national Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. Shadd Cary’s final home in Washington, D.C., is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. When the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C., opened in 2016, the displays included one dedicated to Mary Ann Shadd Cary and her oratory skills.

Many have long known of Mary Ann’s astounding accomplishments, but she is now finally being recognized in her home state of Delaware. An act of Congress in 2021, sponsored by Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., renamed the Wilmington Post Office the “Mary Ann Shadd Cary Post Office.” In February 2022, the Delaware Public Archives dedicated a historic marker on Wilmington’s King Street, honoring Abraham and Mary Ann Shadd.

In anticipation of the 200th anniversary of Mary Ann’s birth, now is the time for Delawareans to finally learn about this incredible trailblazer. The most thorough and detailed book about Mary is “Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century” by Jane Rhodes. I am putting the finishing touches on my attempt to capture, in a brief book, highlighting Mary Ann’s amazing 70 years.

To learn more now, attend one of the Delaware Humanities programs, titled “Mary Ann Shadd Cary — Delaware’s Forgotten Daughter,” listed below:

  • Sunday, Feb. 26, 2 p.m., Appoquinimink Community Library, Middletown.
  • Tuesday, Feb. 21, 4 p.m., Brandywine Hundred Library, Wilmington.
  • Monday, March 13, 10:30 a.m., Elsmere Library, Wilmington.
  • Wednesday, March 15, 6 p.m., Kent County Public Library, Dover.
  • Wednesday, March 22, 11 a.m., Brandywine YMCA, Wilmington.
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