Mary Smart

Mary Smart (1832-1849), occasionally recorded as Mary Stewart, is the earliest known Colony of Sierra Leone resident in the English town of Reading.

Personal life Born in Sierra Leone in 1832, Smart is almost certainly the daughter of John Smart, birth name Okoroafor, a Nigerian nobleman and member of the ruling family of the Imo State in eastern Nigeria. In 1816, he was captured by slave traders but subsequently rescued by a British frigate and released in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Okoroafor took his name from two key influences; Samuel Smart, Governor of Sierra Leone in 1826 and 1828, the other, John Weeks, a missionary from Devon who had converted him to Christianity, respecting Weeks so much that he named his daughters after Week's sisters. Smart died less than a year after her arrival from erysipelas in 1849, aged 17, and was buried on the 13 March in an unmarked grave at Reading Old Cemetery. Smart was one of the first people to be buried at the cemetery which opened in 1843 and was described as 'a pious African girl'.