Born in Delaware to free African American parents, Mary Ann Shadd was an experienced teacher, abolitionist, and author before arriving in Windsor in 1851. There she established an integrated school. Her 1852 monograph, A Plea for Emigration or Notes of Canada West, urged free blacks to seek refuge in Canada from racial oppression in the United States. In 1853, she became the first black woman in North America to publish a weekly newspaper when she founded the Provincial Freeman, which championed abolitionism, temperance, and the rights of blacks and women while encouraging self-reliance as the true road to independence. She later relocated to Toronto and Chatham, married black businessman Thomas Cary, and raised a family. After leaving Canada in 1863, the widowed Shadd Cary became a Union Army recruiter, school principal, attorney, and women's suffragist. She was designated a person of national historic significance in 1994.