author
Nancy Prince
b. 1799
Born free in Massachusetts in 1799, this remarkable traveler and memoirist wrote one of the few published firsthand accounts by a Black American woman in the mid-19th century. Her story moves from New England to imperial Russia and Jamaica, offering a vivid view of faith, endurance, and abolitionist purpose.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Nancy Gardner Prince was a free Black woman whose life crossed boundaries of nation, class, and race at a time when that was extraordinarily rare. She later married Nero Prince, a former enslaved man and mariner, and traveled with him to Russia, where she lived for several years in St. Petersburg.
Her best-known work, A Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince, was first published in 1850. In it, she recounts her childhood, her travels, and her observations of major events, including life in Russia and later work in Jamaica after emancipation. The book is especially valued today because it preserves the voice of a Black woman writing directly about the wider Atlantic world in the 1800s.
Prince is also remembered for her moral courage and reform-minded life. Sources describe her as connected to antislavery efforts in Boston, and her memoir shows a strong religious faith alongside a practical determination to help others. No confirmed portrait appears to be readily available from the reliable sources reviewed, but her writing remains a powerful record of independence, witness, and survival.