MARY JEMISON
Mary Jemison (Deh-he-wä-nis) was a Scots-Irish colonial frontierswoman in Pennsylvania and New York, who became known as the "White Woman of the Genesee." She had been taken as a youth and adopted into a Seneca family, assimilating to their culture, marrying two Native American men in succession, and having children with them. In 1824 she published a memoir of her life, a form of captivity narrative. In 1755 during the French and Indian War, Jemison at age 12 was captured with most of her family in a Shawnee mourning raid in what is now Adams County, Pennsylvania. The others of her family were killed. 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.
