page_title: Mary Jemison
section_title: Legacy and honors
hierarchical_section_title: Mary Jemison / Legacy and honors
caption_attribution_description: St. Ignatius Loyola Catholic Church in Adams County, Pennsylvania
context_page_description: Mary Jemison 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, and, after his death, a Seneca man. She chose to remain a Seneca rather than return to British colonial culture.
  Jemison told her story late in life to an American minister, who wrote it for her. He published it as Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison. 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.
context_section_description: In 1874, at the request of her descendants, Jemison's remains were transferred and reinterred near the 1765 Seneca Council House, which had been moved from the former Caneadea Reservation. The building had been purchased by William Pryor Letchworth and relocated to his Glen Iris Estate. He had the structure restored in 1872 by John Shanks, a Seneca grandson of Jemison. Letchworth invited Seneca and state officials that year for a rededication of the Council House. In 1881, Letchworth acquired a cabin formerly belonging to Mary's daughter, Nancy Jemison. He had it moved from Gardeau Flats to near the Council House and Mary's gravesite. In 1906 he bequeathed his entire estate to New York. Near the present-day town of Castile, today the property is within the grounds of Letchworth State Park.
  A bronze statue of Mary Jemison, created in 1910 by Henry Kirke Bush-Brown, marks her grave. Following state restoration of the grounds to Letchworth's time, in 2006 the memorial was reinstalled between the council house and cabin. Dr. George Frederick Kunz helped pay for and commission the 1910 memorial to Jemison.
caption: Statue of Jemison, near her home in Adams County, Pennsylvania, erected in 1921
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