Mary Jemison

Mary Jemison (Deh-he-wä-nis) (1743 – September 19, 1833) was a Scots-Irish colonial frontierswoman in Pennsylvania and New York, who became known as the "White Woman of the Genesee." As a young girl, she was kidnapped by a group of Shawnee and French men, and was later adopted into a family of the Seneca, assimilating to their culture, marrying twice to Native American men and having children with both. In 1824, she published a memoir of her life. During the French and Indian War, in spring 1755, twelve year-old Jemison was captured with most of her family in a Shawnee raid in what is now Adams County, Pennsylvania. The rest of her family was murdered. She and an unrelated young boy were adopted by Seneca families. She became fully assimilated, marrying a Delaware (Lenape), and, after his death, a Seneca man. She chose to remain a Seneca rather than return to American colonial culture. Jemison told her story late in life to an American minister, who wrote it for her. He published it, a form of captivity narrative, as Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison (1824). It was reprinted in the late 20th century. In 1874 her remains were reinterred near a historic Seneca council house on a private estate, in what is now Letchworth State Park.