The amazing Shadd family: Architects of freedom, neglected by history

Abraham Doras Shadd, patriarch of the remarkable Shadd family that played a major role in the fight against slavery and the developments of the Reconstruction era in both Canada and the United States, was born March 2, 1801, in the little known Mill Creek Hundred district of Delaware, to free parents. Mill Creek Hundred historian and blogger Scott Palmer says that Abraham Shadd grew up in Wilmington and inherited his father’s shoemaking business. His parents had friends within white society but remained firmly engaged in Wilmington’s activist Black society, Palmer wrote.

Shadd married Harriet Parnell of North Carolina around 1822 and saw the birth of their first child, Mary Ann, in 1823. There would be 12 more offspring to follow. All his children followed their father’s example in the fight against slavery and the “improvement” of the Black race by way of education and skillful employment. The most exceptional among them were Mary Ann, Isaac (I. D.), and Isaac’s wife, Amelia, who all left lasting imprints on the road to freedom in both Canada and the United States, especially in Post-Civil War Mississippi. 

Shadd was strongly opposed to the African Colonization Society (ACS) – est. 1816 – that sought to ship all free Black people to Liberia. In 1830, he represented Delaware at the organizational meeting of the National Convention for the Improvement of Free People of Color held in Philadelphia and was vice-president of the annual convention in 1831. Central to the convention’s purpose was “purchasing lands and establishing a settlement in upper Canada.” 

Shadd was also a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, established in 1833 to counter the undesirable work of the ACS.

Abraham Shadd was a dedicated conductor of the Underground Railroad and used his homes in Wilmington and West Chester, PA as waystations for escapees. 

The passing of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 was a major factor in Shadd’s decision to move his family to North Buxton, Ontario, a free Black community that was established by former Louisiana slaves in 1849. 

In 1858, the Shadd family patriarch became the first Black man to be elected to political office in Canada, when he won a spot as a counselor of Raleigh Township. Shadd died February 11, 1882, age 79, in Kent County, Ontario. One of the main roads in North Buxton is named for him. 

SHADD LEGACY

Four of Shadd’s children became prominent in their own right. First born, Mary Ann Shadd (1823-1893) was born in Delaware. Mary attended a Quaker-sponsored school in West Chester, PA. At age 16, Shadd opened a school for Black children in Wilmington.

Mary Ann Shadd taught for more than 10 years in various towns and cities in Pennsylvania and New York before seeking out another pathway to advance her sense of duty in the challenging times brought on by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. 

Reflecting on the 27-year-old Mary Ann Shadd’s impact on her times, her descendant Adrienne Shadd, a resident of Canada today, wrote for the Library and Archives of Canada in January 2008: 

“In 1851…Shadd moved to Windsor, where she opened a school for the area’s growing fugitive slave population. In 1852, she published A Plea for Emigration; or Notes of Canada West, which touted the country as a major refuge, not only for slaves who had escaped, but also for free Blacks in the northern states experiencing increasing restrictions. However, her public outspokenness and willingness to take on male leaders in the community, both Black and non-Black, got her into hot water. A dispute with the Bibbs (her associates in a publishing venture) over the publicizing of her financial support by the American Missionary Association spilled onto the pages of their newspaper and led to her firing from her teaching position. It also changed history.”

Shadd wanted to express her ideas and opinions without being censored and began publishing The Provincial Freeman in 1853 while still in Canada. Thus, Mary Ann Shadd became the first Black woman in North America to publish and edit a newspaper. Her brother, I. D. Shadd, also worked as an editor of the paper.

In 1856, she married Thomas F. Cary, a Toronto barber who died in 1860. 

During the Civil War in the U.S., Martin R. Delany urged Shadd Cary to return to the states to help recruit Black men for the Union Army. After the war, she returned to teaching in Wilmington and Washington, D.C. During this time in Washington, she earned a law degree from Howard University, only the second Black woman in the U. S. to earn a law degree. 

In later years, she became an avid crusader for female suffrage and wrote for a number of publications dedicated to that cause. Succumbing to cancer on June 5, 1893, in Washington, she was buried there at Columbian Harmony Cemetery. 

SHADDS OF MISSISSIPPI 

I. D. Shadd, who had worked with his sister Mary Ann on her newspaper in Canada, was first reported in Mississippi in 1870 working as the bookkeeper for the businesses owned by the wealthy former slave Benjamin T. Montgomery, who was now the owner of two plantations at Davis Bend in Warren County. 

I. D. Shadd was elected to the Mississippi legislature from Davis Bend in 1871. He served as Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives in his final year of 1874. 

During his political career in Mississippi, Shadd developed a reputation for organizing armed poll-watchers on election day to guard against the reported attempts of white Democrats who sought to co-opt or block Black votes in Mississippi’s rural areas.

I. D. Shadd’s wife, Amelia Freeman Shadd, was a graduate of Oberlin College, and was a respected educator in Chatham, Canada, where she met and married Isaac. She was appointed principal of the Cherry Street School in Vicksburg in 1873, the first female school principal in Mississippi. In 1879, the couple moved to Greenville, where Amelia again took up the practice of teaching and I. D. Shadd opened the Shadd Training College to teach trades to Black youth.

The March 25, 1896, edition of the Vicksburg Daily Herald reported the death of I. D. Shadd as occurring on March 15, 1896.

Several other siblings of the Shadd family have been noted for their outstanding accomplishments and service to society. Among these are: Abraham W. Shadd (1844-1878), graduate of Howard Law School, practiced law in Mississippi and Arkansas; Emaline Shadd (1835-1888), professor at Howard University; and Eunice Shadd (1846-1888), a public school teacher and an 1877 graduate of Howard University College of Medicine.