Mary Ann Shadd Cary House

The Mary Ann Shadd Cary House is located on the southern fringe of Washington's Columbia Heights, on the north side of W Street between 14th Street and Florida Avenue. It is one of a series of brick row houses, probably built in the 1890s. It is a two-story home and is three bays wide, with a corbelled cornice, and projecting brick hoods around its windows. It was from 1881 to 1885 the home of Mary Ann Shadd Cary.^[5] Shadd Cary's children Sarah Cary and Linton Cary also lived here with their mother from 1881 to 1886 before moving out together to a house on 17th St. N.W.^[6]

Mary Ann Shadd was born a free black person in the slave state of Delaware, and was educated in Pennsylvania. Her father was active in anti-slavery circles, sheltering fugitive slaves in the family home. At first a school teacher for African American children, she and other family members left for Canada following passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Settling in Ontario, she began publishing works to inform American blacks about conditions in Canada, so that they could judge whether migration there was in their interests. This effort resulted in the founding of the Provincial Freeman, the first newspaper published by a black woman in North America, and the first by a woman in what is now Canada. After the American Civil War, she returned to the United States, where she returned to teaching and continued to be active in civil rights. She acquired a law degree in 1883.^[5]

• African American history
• List of National Historic Landmarks in Washington, D.C.