Researching Your Black English Roots - Mrs. Mary Seacole (1805 - 1881)

Mrs. Mary Jane Seacole (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seacole#/media/File:Mary_Jane_Seacole.jpeg)

Here is a bit of inspiration for those of you who find yourself running into a brickwall. Widen your search to include YouTube or university websites. If your ancestor is missing or not show up where you think he or she should, check out surrounding counties or maybe they decided to go to a different country.

Mrs. Mary Seacole had her autobiography, "Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands" published in London in 1857. She was born free in Kingston, Jamaica to a Creole mother and a white army officer from Scotland. Mrs. Seacole travelled many places before she arrived in London. She volunteered to be a nurse in the Crimean War. She was turned down.

MRS. SEACOLE'S HOTEL IN THE CRIMEA, (https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/seacole/adventures/adventures.html#I)

In 1855, she left in a ship with medical supplies. In Crimea, she ran the "British Hotel" near the battlefields, and she was a nurse to soldiers who had been wounded.  Mrs. Seacole went out the battlefront and cared for soldiers there.

Map illustrating Mary Seacole's involvement in the Crimean War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seacole#/media/File:SeacoleWar.png)

I love it that Mrs. Mary Seacole wrote her autobiography. I have included it free here: Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands. Here are different formats for the eBook: Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands by Mary Seacole (Project Gutenberg). In addition, below is an audiobook:

 Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands by Mary Seacole 

A few historic records:

1. Find A Grave: Mary Jane Grant Seacole (1805 -1881)

2. England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837 - 1915 for Mary Seacole

FreeBMD. England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837-1915 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006. Original data:General Register Office. England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes. London, England: General Register Office. © Crown copyright. Published by permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Office for National Statistics. You must not copy on, transfer or reproduce records without the prior permission of ONS. Database Copyright © 1998-2003 Graham Hart, Ben Laurie, Camilla von Massenbach and David Mayall.

3. 1881 England Census: Mary Seacole

Class: RG11; Piece: 16; Folio: 89; Page: 30; GSU roll: 1341004

4. Photo of Mary Seacole:

By Unknown author - Unknown source, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10013082

5. 1944 Newspaper Article

Ancestry.com. Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica) [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2003.

Original data: Daily Gleaner. Kingston, Jamaica. Database created from microfilm copies of the newspaper.

Hopefully, you will appreciate the story of Mrs. Mary Jane Grant Seacole and the use of "My Best Genealogy Tips: Researching Your English Roots," which we used to flesh out historical records on her life. You can purchase "My Best Genealogy Tips: Researching Your English Roots: Foster, Robin R.: 9798325328442: Amazon.com: Books."