WOMEN IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1800; GRACEANNA LEWIS P/28

 

In this post I will begin to focus on a woman named Graceanna Lewis. She lived from 1821 -1912. Her father was a farmer named John Lewis and her mother was Esther Fussel. Her parents were Quakers. Graceanna's father died when she was three years old leaving her mother to raise her alone. Her mother had been a school teacher prior to marriage and was instrumental in developing a keen affection for science in Graceanna.

Graceanna's mother served as a role model in social activism by housing fugitive slaves as part of the Underground Railway to freedom in Canada. Following her mother's death, Graceanna made her own home available for this purpose, secretly providing overnight accommodation for as many as 11 runaway slaves at one time. 

Graceanna attended Kimberton Boarding School for Girls in neighbouring Kimberton, Pensylvania, at which she received instruction in many of the natural sciences including astronomy, botany, chemistry and zoology. Graceanna also showed great aptitude as a painter of natural subjects. 

 

 

WOMEN IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1800, MARY ANN SHADD CARY P/27

 

In this blog I will continue to story of Mary Ann Shadd Cary. She lived from 1823- 1893. In 1874, Mary Ann  and a group of women addressed the House Judiciary Committe regarding women's right to vote (today it is once again an important topic). 

She continued to support Canada's suffragists as well, attending a rally in 1881. Despite her boundary-pushing contributions to the pursuit of justice and equity for all people, Mary Ann's legacy largely went ignored in the decades following her death in 1893.

Shadd Cary gave to the world a hundred instances of female heroism, any one of which is sufficient to rescue her name from oblivion and place it in the category of similar characters like Grace Darling, Dorothy Dix, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman or Florence Nightingale," wrote the unknown author of "The Foremost Coloured Canadian Pioneer in 1850," one of the many documents contained in the Moorland-Springarn Research Center's Mary Ann Shadd Cary Collection 

WOMEN IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1800; MARY ANN SHADD CARY P/26

 

In this blog I will continue the story of a woman named Mary Ann Shadd Cary. She lived from 1823 - 1893. Mary Ann's husband, Thomas Cary, died in 1860, leaving her a widow with two children. She continued to struggle financially until her friend and fellow abolitionist Martin Robinson Delany offered her a job as a Recruiting Officer for Black men in the Union Army, making Mary Ann the first Black woman to actively recruit troops. After the Civil War, she remained in Washington D.C.

Mary Ann taught and attended classes at Howard University School of Law, where she was Howard's first Black female law student and one of the first Black women to earn a law degree. Mary Ann then joined the women's suffragette movement. 

To say that Mary Ann was ahead of her time would be an understatement: While Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed the 19th amendment on the grounds that it gave Black men the vote before white women, Mary Ann both spoke in support of the amendment and criticised it for not giving women to right to vote. Furthermore, when even abolitionists were wary of integrated education, Mary Ann opened and taught at a racially integrated school.

WOMEN IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1800; MARY ANN SHADD CAREY P/25

 

In this post I will continue to share the story of Mary Ann Shad Carey. She lived from 1823 - 1893. In 1851, Mary Ann opened  a school for the growing refugee population in Canada and taught racially integrated classes 100 years prior to the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling desegrated U.S. schools. In addition to teaching, she published her words broadly, encouraging Black people to emigrate from the United States to Canada while advocating for integrated education.

Mary Ann's public arguments against segregated schooling caused a rift between her and the publishers of "Voice of the Fugitive," Canada's first Black-owned abolitionist newspaper.

After losing support from their publishers and the American Mission Association, which funded her school, Mary Ann began her own newspaper, "The Provincial Freeman." This made her the very first Black woman to publish a newspaper in North America. "The Provincial Freeman" was the foremost voice of Black communities but, by 1859, she could no longer afford to publish. 

WOMEN IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1800; MARY ANN SHADD CARY P/24

 

In this story I will focus on a woman named Mary Ann Shadd Cary. She was born in 1823 in the free state of Delaware, where her abolitionist parents Abraham D. Shadd and Harriet Parnell Shadd ran their home as a station on the Underground Railroad. Delaware did not allow Black children to be educated, so when Mary Ann was ten years old, the family moved to Pennsylvania and sent their children to a Quaker boarding school. This upbringing undoubtedly impacted Mary Ann, who was seen as a rebel even in her own family of activists.

Mary Ann set up a school for Black children in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and continued to teach throughout the northeastern United States until she moved to Canada in 1851.

When Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, the largest wave of Black migration to Canada in the 19th century was set in motion. Feeling that refugees would need her services, Mary Ann and her brother Isaac migrated to Canada and the rest of her family soon followed.

  

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1900; BEGUM BILQUIS SHEIKH P/ 23 1926

 

In this post I will continue to share the story of a woman named Begum Bilquis Sheikh. She lived from 1919 - 1997. As she read the Bible alongside the Quran, she began questioning her beliefs. In response to her questions, she approached the home of some local American missionaries, David and Synnove Mitchell, where she learned of Christianity for the first time. On 24 December 1966, she converted to Christianity and she soon began attending a local gathering of Christians. 

When Begum's family discovered that she had become a Christian, they began to shun her. She began to receive threatening letters and telephone calls and at one point her home was torched. Thankfully, her servants were able to put out the flames before the whole house caught fire. 

In 1972, Begum fled to the US for safety where she began speaking about her conversion at churches, conferences and Billy Graham Crusades. However, in 1987, she returned to Pakistan to live closer to her family.

Begum died in 1997. 

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1900; BILQUIS SHEIKH P/22

 

In this post I will begin to share the story of the life of a woman named Bilquis Sheikh. She lived from 1926 - 1997. She was born in Pakistan. Her father was Nawab Muzaffar Ali Khan, a Punjabi feudal landlord. Throughout the first 46 years of her life, Bilquis neither embraced nor rejected her Muslim faith, choosing to only believe in that which she could either see or explain.

Bilquis became active in political, diplomatic and social work, following her marriage to General Khalid Masud Sheikh, who was a high-ranking government official.

In 1966, following the death of her parents and dissolution of her marriage Bilquis left her homes in various places and returned to her family's ancestral land in Wah, Pakistan. She began reading the Quran in depth, searching for hope and a higher purpose in her life. During her study, she began noticing that Jesus was mentioned in several places within the Muslim Scriptures and thought that reading His teachings might be beneficial. Unfamiliar with the life of Jesus she began researching further, turning to other sources that were referenced in the text. She asked her chauffeur, who was a Christian man, to bring her a Christian bible, which he did.