A Narrative of the Life of Mary Jemison: The White Woman of the Genesee [De-He-Wa-Mis]

New York: The American Scenic & Historic Preservation Society, 1942. Revised and Enlarged Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/No Jacket. 0x0x0. Twenty-second edition. Front hinge just beginning to loosen, ink name and pencil name and address on front endpaper, 1 inch closed tear to bottom margin of title page, 1 inch closed internal tear to rear flyleaf and last index page. 1942 Hard Cover. xv, 459 pp. 8vo. This edition presents the first edition literally restored, together with chapters added to later editions by Ebenezer Mix, Lewis Henry Morgan, LL.D., William Clement Bryant, and William Pryor Letchworth, LL.D. Enlarged with historical and archaeological memoranda and critical notes by modern authorities. The original edition was published in 1824 (Howes S-263: 'One of the most authentic and interesting of captivity narratives, told by one who spent a long life among the Senecas and was the first white woman to descend the Ohio.'), and quickly republished in London in 1826 (Sabin 78678, Church 1334: 'This well written narrative, purporting to be only the biography of a captive among the Senecas, is really the best resume we have of incidents in the history and common life of the Seneca Indians. Its truthfulness is vouched for by such veracious testimony as that of Eli Parker, an educated chief of that nation, though its authenticity can scarcely have greater corroboration than the fact that Mr. Seaver received almost the whole mass of incidents narrated in his book, directly from the lips of the aged captive herself. - FIELD. Forty years had passed since the close of the revolutionary war, and almost seventy years had seen Mrs. Jemison with the Indians, when Daniel W. Banister, Esq., at the instance of several gentlemen, and prompted by his own ambition to add something to the accumulating fund of useful knowledge, resolved, in the autumn of 1823, to embrace that time, while she was capable of recollecting and reciting the scenes through which she had passed to collect from herself, and to publish to the world, an accurate account of her life. - Introduction, p. viii. At this time Mrs. Jemison was about eighty years of age, and was living in the neighborhood of Genesee River, about four miles from Castile, New York, to which place she went on foot to meet the author and his publisher and tell the story of her life.'). Those editions were both fewer than 200 pages, which gives a good idea of how much content has been added for this publication.