John N. Smith Cemetery-Mary Ann Galloway

Mary Ann Galloway,, 1825 - 1944

Born a slave in the prominent Galloway family in the early days of the Cape Fear County, Mary Ann Galloway spent her girlhood and early womanhood over 40 years enslaved on a plantation in Smithville Township.

She married a fellow slave named Monday Galloway several years prior to the Civil War.
Mrs. Galloway gained her freedom at the end of the Civil War, and her husband died soon afterward.

She never married again nor had children. She spent over 70 years as a free woman, working as a self-employed laundress and accumulated a lot and home of her own in Southport.

She died at the age of 118 and was known as the oldest person living in North Carolina in her time. She is also the oldest person interred in this cemetery.

Images and narrative source: John N. Smith Cemetery.