Talk:Mary Emmons

Mary Emmons as Haitian

I note that in a previous edit to the page, her nationality has been switched from Indian to Haitian, though it's still acknowledged that she was born in Calcutta and only came to Haiti later in life. There are two citations for her being Haitian, but they don't actually support the assertion:

(1) The Elite of Our People makes a passing reference to John Pierre Burr reputedly being the son of Aaron Burr and his Haitian-born mistress, without even bothering to name Emmons. Given that it's a passing mention of a piece of community lore, not an assertion of fact; that it's easy to see how Emmons spending time in Saint-Domingue before reaching New Jersey would be corrupted into the idea that she was born in Haiti; and that the Wikipedia editor who added it still appears to acknowledge that Emmons was born in Calcutta, I don't think this source can be used to justify the statement that Emmons was Haitian and was born in Calcutta. The citation is also misleading because it implies that this is part of the text of Wilson's 1841 work on prominent members of Philadelphia's black community when it isn't, it's an annotation added by a later editor explaining who John Pierre Burr was.

(2) A Wall Street Journal article that just flat-out does not at all say she was Haitian. It says she was born in Calcutta and lived in Haiti before she arrived in the United States, and describes her as "East Indian".

So I'm going to remove the description of her as Haitian. It's unsupported by its citations, and it's almost certainly wrong. Binabik80 (talk) 00:39, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for looking more into this. I originally put Indian as Emmons' nationality, but it was later changed to Haitian -- see conversations here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:103.250.118.56) and here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Va23Tarheel#Mary_Emmons) for more context in case you haven't seen it. I figured that even if it is exceedingly likely that Emmons was born in India, this doesn't exclude her from being Haitian. Looking up "nationality" in the dictionary just gives me "the status of belonging to a particular nation". If India has a claim to her nationality due to her being born in India, doesn't Haiti just as much have a claim to her nationality, particularly if people who knew her / are descended from her consider her Haitian? Llightex (talk) 01:32, 12 June 2022 (UTC)