Mary Prince

Margôt Maddison-MacFadyen

 

I lived in the Turks and Caicos Islands for just under five years, 2005-2009, including six months, in 2008, on Grand Turk Island. Grand Turk Island is one of three islands in the archipelago where the historic Bermudian salt industry was situated. The other two islands where Bermudians made salt—with the labour of slaves—are nearby Salt Cay and South Caicos.

 

Before moving to Grand Turk Island to take up residence, I visited the island over a weekend for “Museum Day,” which I had seen advertised in The Sun, a Turks and Caicos Islands newspaper. The Turks and Caicos National Museum was, at the time, located solely on Grand Turk Island. It was during Museum Day that I re-encountered the story of Mary Prince.

 

Prince was born enslaved in 1787 or 1788, in Bermuda. Over the course of her life, she had five slave-owners—all Bermudians—and she had lived in four territories: Bermuda, Grand Turk Island, Antigua, and London, England. She was enslaved on Grand Turk Island for approximately ten years, 1802-1812, when she worked in the salt industry there for her fourth slave-owner, Robert Darrell.

 

I studied Prince’s The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself, in 1988, as an undergraduate student at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. On Museum Day, it had been 19 years since I had read her slave narrative, but I remembered the basic elements of her story well.

 

What I didn’t remember on Museum Day was that Grand Turk Island was the place of Prince’s enslavement when she had worked in the salt ponds. It wasn’t until I saw copies of The History of Mary Prince for sale in the Turks and Caicos National Museum’s gift shop that I made the connection. Several copies of the book were shelved with those of other local authors. I reached out and pulled a copy off the shelf.

 

From that moment, the landscape of Grand Turk Island shifted, and I began to experience life differently—historically. Derelict salt ponds transformed into stone-walled containments of thickening brine. And everywhere—walking the lanes, at the beach, in historic houses—I saw the enslaved at their tasks. They washed laundry, pounded corn in mortars, raked salt, and loaded salt onto tall ships at anchor in the harbour. And they were punished, sometimes severely, for offences, such as not keeping up with the gang.

 

I made a commitment to the memory of Mary Prince. I decided to further investigate and authenticate her story, and to get her story out to a wider audience, especially to youth and their teachers. With this in mind, I have created this website with Middle School students and older readers as my intended audience.

 

My thought was, and still is, that Prince's narrative is a story of hope. Mary found freedom, and with the help of an abolitionist writing team, of which she was the storyteller, her story was put into print. The History of Mary Prince was published in 1831, and it was reprinted twice that year.

 

In 2010, I began interdisciplinary PhD Studies at The Memorial University of Newfoundland. The title of my dissertation is “Reclaiming Histories of Enslavement from the Maritime Atlantic and a Curriculum: The History of Mary Prince.” For my research, I have visited every place Mary Prince lived. I also visited the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, because archival records about Mary Prince had been relocated there from Antigua, in 1968.

 

The History of Mary Prince is an opening to learn about the Middle Passage and colonial slavery. It is also an opening to learn about food gardens of the past. My thought is that food gardens of the past, and our current food gardens today, may be places to learn about the concept of creolization. Please see short discussions of these topics under the Learn tab of this website.

 

This website is an encapsulation of the findings of my PhD research, which is written up much more fully in my dissertation. My dissertation is digitized and available through Library and Archives Canada. Search in the Theses Canada database to find it. Be advised that my dissertation is a stepping stone to further research that I (either solo or with a team) have done on Mary Prince and related topics. Please see the update below.

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UPDATE — December 30, 2023

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I graduated with an Interdisciplinary PhD from the Memorial University of Newfoundland in May 2017. In 2018, I began a research project for which I received a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). It is titled, "'Mind the Onion Seed!': The Bermuda Onion, Slave Narratives, Plant Knowledge and Seventeenth- to Twentieth-Century Commerce in the Global North Atlantic." In 2019, I completed a research project for Bermuda's Department of Community and Cultural Affairs titled, "The Latter Days of Bermudian National Hero Mary Prince," and I also began work as a co-investigator on a second research project for the same agency. The second research project for Bermuda is titled, "The Mary Prince Research Group," and it is now completed. I am very pleased to say that Bermudian historian Dr. Clarence Maxwell (who was the external examiner of my dissertation) was the other co-investigator on this second project, along with Bermudians Ms. Karla Ingemann and Ms. Keishunda Curtis who worked as research assistants.

 

Dr. Maxwell and I have co-authored a book, "Set Us Free": Mary Prince and the Making of History.  When our book is published, I plan to update this website with some of our new information about Mary Prince.