![]() Instead, she focused her energy on traveling and nursing. In 1836, she married Edwin Seacole, whom Mary describes in her will as a godson of Admiral Lord Nelson.Įdwin was in ill health throughout their brief marriage and died in 1844, the same year as Seacole’s mother. Seacole took two trips to England as a teenager, spending a total of three years in London before heading to the Bahamas, Haiti, and Cuba, where she bought goods to sell back home in Kingston. “I was never weary of tracing upon an old map the route to England and never followed with my gaze the stately ships homeward bound without longing to be in them, and see the blue hills of Jamaica fade into the distance.” “As I grew into womanhood, I began to indulge that longing which will never leave me while I have health and vigour,” she writes. Seacole also had a highly developed sense of wanderlust. She recalled learning much from her mother, as well as doctors staying at the Grants' boarding house. Seacole and her mother ran a boarding house for officers in Kingston, and looked after lodgers who were ill. (Jamaica was a British colony at the time.) Seacole called her Creole mother an “admirable doctress,” meaning a user of traditional herbal remedies. Seacole’s father was a Scottish soldier stationed in Jamaica. “But I do not mind confessing that the century and myself were both young together, and that we have grown side-by-side into age and consequence.” “As a female, and a widow, I may be well excused giving the precise date of this important event,” she writes in her book, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. ![]() Her year of birth is taken from her death certificate.) (She gave the census an incorrect age twice, reporting herself five years younger than she actually was. Mary Jane Grant was born in Kingston, Jamaica, sometime in 1805, although she kept her actual birth date a secret. There, her compassion and dedication earned her the nickname “Mother Seacole.” Seacole authored a book based on her travels in Panama-where she ran a store for men going overland to the California Gold Rush-and her experiences in the Crimean War, where she ran a store and catering service for officers. ![]() A Jamaican woman of mixed race, she was awarded the Order of Merit posthumously by the government of Jamaica and celebrated as a “ Black Briton” in the United Kingdom. Mary Seacole was a daring adventurer of the 19th century. ![]()
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