Nancy Gardner Prince

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Nancy Gardner Prince (September 15, 1799 – c. 1856) was an African-American woman born free in Newburyport, Massachusetts,[1] who wrote about her travels in Russia and Jamaica.

Early life[]

Little is known about Prince's family life.

Her father, a seaman from Nantucket, died when she was an infant, leaving her in the care of her mother, who subsequently married several times, so that Nancy had six younger siblings.[2]

They sold berries to support the family and she eventually went on to work as a servant for white families.

Marriage[]

On February 15, 1824 she married Nero Prince, one of the founders of the Prince Hall Freemasons in Boston.[3]

They travelled to Russia, where she opened a boarding home and made clothing for infants, while her husband was a footman to the czar in St. Petersburg.

Writings[]

Her published autobiography includes an account of how her marriage led her to the Russian Courts of Alexander I and Nicholas I.[4] "The author vividly describes local Russian customs, as well as her experiences of the Saint Petersburg flood of 1824 and the Decembrist Revolt."

In the 1840s, her travels to Jamaica brought her into contact with the Returned Jamaican Maroons of Flagstaff, who had returned to Jamaica after half a century's exile in Sierra Leone. They had been exiled from Jamaica after the Second Maroon War of 1795-6.[5]

Later life and death[]

When they returned to Boston, she started her own seamstress business and gave lectures about her travels to Russia and Jamaica. The date of her death is uncertain.

References[]

  1. ^ Afro-American women writers, 1746-1933 : an anthology and critical guide. Shockley, Ann Allen. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: New American Library. 1988. p. 48. ISBN 0-452-00981-2. OCLC 19066213.CS1 maint: others (link)
  2. ^ Yee, Shirley, "Prince, Nancy Gardner (1799-c.1856)", Black Past, February 22, 2007.
  3. ^ "History of Prince Hall". Shelton D. Redden Lodge #139. 2017-03-20. Retrieved 2019-10-16.
  4. ^ Kaganoff, Penny. "A Black Woman’s Odyssey Through Russia and Jamaica: the Narrative of Nancy Prince". 'Publishers Weekly, June 28, 1990: 95. Gale Biography in Content.
  5. ^ Michael Sivapragasam, "The Returned Maroons of Trelawny Town", Navigating Crosscurrents: Trans-linguality, Trans-culturality and Trans-identification in the Dutch Caribbean and Beyond, ed. by Nicholas Faraclas, etc (Curacao/Puerto Rico: University of Curacao, 2020), p. 21.

External links[]

Further reading[]

  • Bolden, Tonya. Biographies. Digital Schomburg, African American Women Writers of the 19th Century (accessed November 18, 2011),
  • "Nancy Gardner Prince", Notable Black American Women. Gale, 1992. Gale Biography in Context. Web. September 13, 2012.
  • Yee, Shirley. "Prince, Nancy Gardner 1799-c 1856", BlackPast.org (accessed January 12, 2012)
  • Kaganoff, Penny. "A Black Woman’s Odyssey Through Russia and Jamaica: the Narrative of Nancy Prince". Publishers Weekly, June 28, 1990: 95. Gale Biography in Content. Web. September 13, 2012
  • Prince, Nancy, A Narrative of the life and travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince, accessed November 18, 2011)
  • Yee, Shirley J., Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism, 1828-1860 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992)
  • Loewenberg, Bert James, and Ruth Bogin, eds, Black Women in Nineteenth Century American Life (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1978).
  • Australia Tarver Henderson, "Nancy Gardner Prince" in Darlene Clark Hine, ed., Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, vol. II (New York: Carlson, 1993): 946–47.
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