From the Stage: Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Summer 1855: Shadd moved from Windsor to Chatham in Ontario, Canada West.
August 1855: Mary Ann Shadd attended a meeting in the Dawn settlement, a 1,500-acre Black community in the town of Dresden. Shadd was an influential voice in the debate over leadership of the Dawn settlement.
September to early October 1855: Shadd embarked on her Canadian tour traveling to London, Niagara, and St. Catherines  to raise funds for the Freeman and the Dawn controversy.
October 13, 1855: Shadd left from St. Catherines heading to Philadelphia where she arrived on October 13.
October 16-18, 1855: Shadd attended the National Convention in Philadelphia.
October-mid November 1855: Shadd remained in Philadelphia giving several talks. On November 6, she participated in a debate with Isaiah C. Wears on the topic “Shall the Free Colored People of the United States Emigrate to Canada,” at the Banneker Institute of Philadelphia.
Early December 1855: Shadd arrived back in Windsor.
Mid-December 1855: Shadd traveled south along the Detroit River to Amherstburg, a town with a considerable Black population that was an active point in the Underground Railroad.
Late December 1855: Shadd returns to Chatham to spend the holiday season with her family. She marries Thomas F. Cary on January 3, 1856.

Read Shadd’s biography here.

Below is a storymap of Mary Ann Shadd’s travels in 1855.

Credits

Anna Lacy, English 641, Spring 2016. Taught by Professor P. Gabrielle Foreman, University of Delaware.

Edited by Gwendolyn Meredith, University of Delaware.

References

Rhodes, Jane. The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998.