Résumé
Résumé de Récit de la vie de madame Mary Jemison
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You will enjoy this book if you love true stories of the American frontier, first-person memoir, Seneca and Iroquois history, or the lives of women who built homes on land few settlers had seen.
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Picture a girl sent to a neighbor's farm in Pennsylvania in the spring of 1755. She comes home at dawn. Within days, her parents, two younger brothers and sister are dead, and she is walking west with strangers whose language she cannot speak.
This is the opening of A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, written down by James E. Seaver and published in 1824. He met her when she was about eighty and spent three days taking notes. She had lived among the Seneca for nearly seventy years. You get a rare view from inside a frontier world, told by a woman who belonged to it.
Dans ce résumé
- 1An old woman tells her story to a strangerFree
- 2A happy farm ends in one morning
- 3Adoption turns a captive into a sister
- 4Marriage, motherhood and the road to Genishau
- 5She chooses to stay and builds a family
- 6War reaches the Genesee flats
- 7Other lives pass through her house
- 8Three sons lost and a land sold
Point clé 1 sur 8
An old woman tells her story to a stranger
The book begins with its making. In the fall of 1823, a publisher named Daniel W. Banister decided to preserve the story of the woman her neighbors called The White Woman. He hired James E. Seaver, who traveled to Castile, New York, where Mary Jemison walked four miles to meet him.
She came with Thomas Clute, a neighbor she trusted. Seaver says the story would not have come out without him, because she was careful about what she told white people she did not know. Within a day or two she relaxed, and she spoke with gentleness and simplicity.
Seaver paints her in detail. She is very short, her head bent forward from years of carrying loads on a strap across her forehead. Her eyes are light blue, and her mind still holds seventy years of events in good order. She wears Indian dress by choice and works every day. He promises to record only what he understood to be fact.
This is a spoken life, shaped by one writer. Mary tells what she saw and felt, and she leaves out what might shame her children.
A life told aloud late in age carries its own truth, and its own silences.
That’s 1 of 8 key points.
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About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 44,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 3 h 5 min
Questions about Récit de la vie de madame Mary Jemison
What is A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison about?
It tells how a girl taken from her family's Pennsylvania farm in 1755 was adopted by the Seneca, married, raised children, lived through the Revolutionary War, won land on the Genesee River, and lived there into old age.
Who was Dickewamis?
Dickewamis was the Seneca name given to Mary at her adoption. She bore this name throughout her remaining years, and the account gives its meaning as a beautiful girl or something pleasing and good.
Why did Mary Jemison choose to stay with the Seneca?
She says the chiefs would not let her son Thomas leave, that she had many Indian children, and that she feared coldness from white relatives. Her loyalty to her adoptive family and the life she built there also counted.
Cite this edition
Seaver, James E. A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-narrative-of-the-life-of-mrs-mary-jemison.
Seaver, J. E. (2026). A narrative of the life of Mrs. Mary Jemison. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-narrative-of-the-life-of-mrs-mary-jemison (Original work published 1824)
Seaver, James E. A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-narrative-of-the-life-of-mrs-mary-jemison.
@book{seaver2026narrative,
author = {Seaver, James E.},
title = {A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-narrative-of-the-life-of-mrs-mary-jemison},
note = {First published 1824}
}
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