Mary Smith Peake died of tuberculosis in Hampton, Virginia. She had been hired the previous year by the American Missionary Society to teach recently free slaves who had gathered in large numbers around the Union lines around Fort Monroe. She reportedly held her first classes for "contrabands" on September 17, 1861, under a tree on the grounds that would become officially in 1868 the Hampton Institute. She was thirty-nine years old. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander, An African-American History of the Civil War in Hampton Roads (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 210), np.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Personal
