Mary Edmonia Lewis
claimed two different years of birth throughout her life but research seems to indicate that she was probably born sometime in 1844, some accounts list the date as July 4th, in upstate New York. Her mother was Native American, maybe part part Ojibwa and part Chippewa, and her father was a black gentleman’s servant. Edmonia’s Chippewa name was Wildfire. She was orphaned at a early age and she claimed that she was raised by some of her mother’s relatives. Her older brother,