Kathleen Mary Easmon Simango (9 August 1891 – 20 July 1924) was a

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierra ...

an missionary and artist who was the first West African to earn a diploma from the Royal College of Arts, Royal College of Art. She was the niece of

Adelaide Casely-Hayford Adelaide Casely-Hayford, Order of the British Empire, MBE (née Smith; 2 June 1868 – 24 January 1960), was a Sierra Leone Creole people, Sierra Leone Creole advocate, an activist of cultural nationalism, a teacher and fiction writer and a femi ...

and was a personal friend of

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (15 August 18751 September 1912) was a British composer and conductor. Of mixed-race birth, Coleridge-Taylor achieved such success that he was referred to by white New York musicians as the "African Mahler" when ...

. Simango was also a member of the prominent

Sierra Leone Creole The Sierra Leone Creole people ( kri, Krio people) are an ethnic group of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Creole people are lineal descendant, descendants of freed African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Sierra Leone Liberated African, Liberated Af ...

Easmon family The Easmon family or the ''Easmon Medical Dynasty'' is a Sierra Leone Creole medical dynasty of African-American descent originally based in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Freetown, Sierra Leone. The Easmon family has ancestral roots in the United State ...

Early years and education

Kathleen Mary Easmon was born on 9 August 1891 as the younger of two children in

Accra Accra (; tw, Nkran; dag, Ankara; gaa, Ga or ''Gaga'') is the capital and largest city of Ghana, located on the southern coast at the Gulf of Guinea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. As of 2021 census, the Accra Metropolitan District, , ...

Gold Coast Gold Coast may refer to: Places Africa * Gold Coast (region), in West Africa, which was made up of the following colonies, before being established as the independent nation of Ghana: ** Portuguese Gold Coast (Portuguese, 1482–1642) ** Dutch G ...

(present-day Ghana), to Dr

John Farrell Easmon John Farrell Easmon, MRCS, LM, LKQCP, MD, CMO (30 June 1856 – 9 June 1900), was a prominent Sierra Leonean Sierra Leone Creole people, Creole doctor in the British Gold Coast who served as Chief Medical Officer during the 1890s. Easmon ...

and Annette Kathleen Easmon, née Smith. Kathleen was educated at Slaford House School, then

Notting Hill High School Notting Hill and Ealing High School is an independent school for girls aged 4 – 18 in Ealing, London. Founded in 1873, it is one of the 26 schools that make up the Girls' Day School Trust. It has a Junior Department of 310 girls (ages 4–11) ...

from 1903 to 1907, then the Girls' Modern School, Bedford, from 1907 to 1908, and finally studied at the Royal College of Arts, Royal College of Art in London. She began writing poetry at a young age, and when she was still a teenager some of her poems were set to music by composer

, who was a family friend.

Personal life

She was married to Columbus Kamba Simango, an

East Africa East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territories make up Eastern Africa: Due to the historical ...

n teacher educated at

Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute Hampton University is a private, historically black, research university in Hampton, Virginia. Founded in 1868 as Hampton Agricultural and Industrial School, it was established by Black and White leaders of the American Missionary Association afte ...

and

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

Death

Kathleen Easmon died of appendicitis, aged 32, on 20 July 1924 at

Charing Cross Hospital Charing Cross Hospital is an acute general teaching hospital located in Hammersmith, London, United Kingdom. The present hospital was opened in 1973, although it was originally established in 1818, approximately five miles east, in central Lond ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, England. Her obituary in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' described her as " e of the most cultured women that West Africa has yet given the world".

Sources

*M. C. F. Easmon, "A Nova Scotian Family", ''Eminent Sierra Leoneans in the nineteenth century'' (1961). *Adell Patton, Jr., "Dr. John Farrell Easmon: Medical Professionalism and Colonial Racism in the Gold Coast, 1856–1900", ''The International Journal of African Historical Studies'', Vol. 22, No. 4 (1989), pp. 601–636. *Adell Patton Jr., "The Easmon Episode", ''Physicians, Colonial Racism, and Diaspora in West Africa'', pp. 93–122.

References

External links

Easmon Family History
1891 births 1924 deaths Sierra Leone Creole people Kathleen Mary Sierra Leonean people of African-American descent Sierra Leoneans of Jamaican Maroon descent Sierra Leonean people of Caribbean descent Sierra Leonean people of Irish descent Sierra Leonean people of British descent People educated at Notting Hill & Ealing High School MacCormac family of County Armagh, Northern Ireland Deaths from appendicitis {{SierraLeone-bio-stub