Cary, Mary Ann Shadd, 1823-1893

Shadd Cary was born free on 9 October 1823 in Wilmington, Delaware, a slave-holding state, to Abraham Doras Shadd and Harriet Parnell. She was the eldest of 13 children. Her parents were active abolitionists and, as such, her home was a safe house on the Underground Railroad.


As education was denied to Black children, particularly girls, in Delaware, the Shadd family moved to Pennsylvania in 1833 where there were more opportunities for free Black people. Shadd Cary is thought to have received a Quaker education there, although records of her attendance at local Quaker schools have not been located. Nevertheless, she became a teacher and she taught at Black schools in Wilmington, DE; New York City, NY; Trenton, NJ; and Norristown, PA until 1850. During that period, Shadd Cary also began to participate in political discourse, writing a letter to Frederick Douglass (which would be published in his North Star newspaper) about the condition of Free Black Americans and a short pamphlet entitled "Hints to the Colored People of the North."


In September 1851, following the passage of the "Fugitive Slave Act" (1850), Shadd Cary attended the North American Convention of Coloured Freemen at St. Lawrence Hall in Toronto, Upper Canada. It was the first such Convention held outside of the United States. There Shadd Cary met Henry and Mary Bibb, activists and publishers of the newspaper "Voice of the Fugitive," at the Convention who convinced her to take a teaching position near their home in Sandwich (now, Windsor, Ontario).


Following the Convention, Shadd Cary moved to Windsor with her brother, Isaac. There, she gained prominence as a leader and spokesperson for Black refugees and freedom seekers who fled the United States to Canada. In Windsor, she established a racially integrated school with the support of the American Missionary Association. She also published material that outlined the advantages of Canada for Black settlers moving north, including "A Plea for Emigration; or Notes of Canada West" (1852).


In 1853, she was instrumental in founding "The Provincial Freeman," a weekly newspaper first printed on 24 March 1853. Shadd used the "Provincial Freeman" to promote emigration to Canada West. Shadd Cary hid the depth of her involvement in the publication, but from the beginning, she was responsible for much of the "The Provincial Freeman's" content. Thus, she became the first Black woman in North America to publish a newspaper and one of the first female journalists in Canada. When the paper moved to Toronto in 1854, she took over the editorship publicly. The newspaper was published in Toronto until 1855, following which time, it was published from Chatham. Due to financial pressure, it folded in 1860.


After spending the first few years of the American Civil War as a schoolteacher in Chatham, Shadd Cary returned to the United States and by 1863 was working as a recruitment agent for the Union Army in Indiana. Later, she moved to Washington, DC, where she worked as a teacher. Years after, she pursued law studies at Howard University and in 1883 became one of the first Black women in the United States to complete a law degree.


Shadd Cary continued to participate in both civil rights and equal rights movements in the United States, returning to Canada only briefly, in 1881, to organize a suffragist rally.


Shadd Cary married Thomas Fauntleroy Cary on 3 January 1856 in St. Catharines, Ontario. They had one son and one daughter. He died unexpectedly in 1860.


Shadd Cary herself died of cancer on 5 June 1893 in Washington, DC.


In 1994, Shadd Cary was designated a Person of National Historic Significance in Canada.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary; October 9, 1823, Wilmington, Delaware – June 5, 1893, Washington, D.C.; eldest of 13 children to Abraham Doras Shadd (1801–1882) and Harriet Burton Parnell, who were free African-Americans; father a conductor in Underground Raildroad, grew up with many fugative slaves in her house; attended a Quaker Boarding School in Pennsylvania; moved with family to Ontario, Canada; While in Windsor, Ontario, she founded a racially integrated school with the support of the American Missionary Association, published a pamphlet called, "Notes on Canada West," which was a plea for emigration and discussed the benefits, as well as the opportunities, of blacks in the area, and she also ran an anti-slavery newspaper called The Provincial Freeman, which made her the first female editor in North America; Cary, the first African-American woman to publish and own a newspaper that distributed in North America, founded The Provincial Freeman in 1853; In 1856, she married Thomas F. Cary, a Toronto barber who was also involved with the Provincial Freeman. She had a daughter named Sarah and a son named Linton; husband died in 1860 and moved with family back to US; During the Civil War, at the behest of the abolitionist Martin Delany, she served as a recruiting officer to enlist black volunteers for the Union Army in the state of Indiana. After the Civil War, she taught in black schools in Wilmington, before moving to Washington, D.C., where she taught in public schools and attended Howard University School of Law. She graduated as a lawyer at the age of 60 in 1883, becoming only the second black woman in the United States to earn a law degree. She wrote for the newspapers National Era and The People's Advocate and in 1880, organized the Colored Women's Progressive Franchise; Shadd Cary joined the National Woman Suffrage Association, working alongside Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for women's suffrage, testifying before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, and becoming the first African-American woman to vote in a national election; She died in Washington, D.C., on June 5, 1893 from stomach cancer.