Mary Kelsey Peake
(1823-1862) Norfolk, Virginia
One of the first African American teachers in the South, Peake created a school for the "contrabands of war" during the Civil War.
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Mary Kelsey Peake (1823-1862) Norfolk, Virginia One of the first African American teachers in the South, Peake created a school for the "contrabands of war" during the Civil War. |
| During the 1840s Mary Kelsey Peake lived on Fenchurch and Church streets and joined First Baptist Church on Bute Street. While at First Baptist, Peake founded the church's benevolent society and taught the congregation's children how to read and write. In 1851 she married Thomas Peake of Hampton who, during the war, served as a spy for the Union Army. Sometime in the 1850s Peake secretly taught African Americans--free and slave--to read and write. When her Hampton church was burned, she taught under an oak tree, later named "Emancipation Oak." In the first year of the Civil War, Mary Peake opened a school for "contrabands of war" becoming one of the first African American teachers in the South. | |