Breaking The Chains

Equiano's Daughter - Angelina Osborne

Equiano's Daughter - Joanna Vassa

The revival of interest into the life of Olaudah Equiano has also revived interest into finding out what happened to his surviving daughter, Joanna. I was commissioned by Momentum Arts, a social inclusion organisation based in Cambridge to research her life as part of the Untold Stories programme they were conducting in 2006/7. Joanna's life is inextricably linked with her father's - who she was determined who cared for her wellbeing and inheritance, and who she married. I was given only a small window of time to research her life, and what I found only raised more questions in my mind about her. I wondered, like other historical researchers before me, whether she had tried to continue her father's campaign against enslavement, writing pamphlets, attending meetings, organising marches. Wishful thinking on my part perhaps, but being the daughter of one of Britain's black political founding fathers must have been something that she had known from a young age, and may have influenced her thinking - it must have influenced what she thought of herself. As it was, what I did discover only increased the desire in me to know more; unfortunately time was something I didn't have. My research continues.

Joanna's Parents
Equiano probably met Susannah Cullen while selling and promoting his book, we can only imagine the impression this handsome, articulate well dressed African gentleman had on her, and the impression she made on him. They married in St Andrew's church in Soham in April 1792. The happy occasion was announced in the Cambridge Chronicle and Journal:

On Monday fortnight Gustavus Vassa the African, well known in most parts of this kingdom as a preacher, was married at Soham, to Miss Cullen, daughter of the Late Mr James Cullen of Ely.
(On the 17th April 2007, a plaque was unveiled in this church to commemorate their marriage by Momentum Arts)

Immediately after the wedding, Equiano took Susannah with him on his book tours to Scotland, passing through Paisley, Glasgow and Edinburgh, giving talks, meeting fellow abolitionists and selling his book. Susannah, who had probably never been outside of Cambridge, must have seen this as an exhausting, exciting existence. They returned to Soham after the tour, making it their home. They had two daughters - Anna Maria, born in October 1793, and Joanna, born in April 1795. In 1796, Susannah died after a long illness, leaving Equiano to care for two young daughters. I assume, for I have no concrete evidence to confirm this that he would have had assistance from Susannah's family, particularly their grandmother, Anne Cullen. Most likely they stayed in the Cambridgeshire area.
Equiano made a will, making provisions for his daughters. Naming John Audley and Edward Ind as the co-executors, he requested that they 'shall and do receive and take the produce and profits arising from my estates both real and personal and apply the same or a sufficient part thereof toward the board, education of my two infant daughters...until they shall respectively attain their respective ages of twenty one'. In the codicil of the will he also bequeathed the girls some land that he would inherit should his mother in law die before him.
Equiano drew up his Will in London, in Plasterers' Hall. In the final year of his life, he probably saw very little of his young daughters. He died on March 31st 1797.


An orphan
By July 1797, Anna Maria Vassa was also dead, at the age of four, possibly of a measles epidemic that had affected the area. She is buried in Chesterton, exact location unknown. However, there is a plaque dedicated to her memory on the side of St Andrew's Church, with a poem. It is believed that Martha Peckard, wife of Peter Peckard, master of Magdalen College, Cambridge, an associate of Equiano wrote the poem and paid for the plaque, another illustration of how highly he was thought of in his lifetime, and after his death.
We hear nothing of Joanna until 1816, the year that she turns 21, but we can assume that she was raised in Cambridgeshire, by her mother's family, and no doubt called upon from time to time by friends of her father. Now eligible to receive her inheritance, it is duly allocated to her by John Audley, executor of the will and friend of Equiano. She receives £950. In today's money this would be around £160,000. This meant that Joanna Vassa was an heiress with a very comfortable income, which would have attracted many suitors; however, five years would pass before she married Henry Bromley, a Congregationalist minister who had studied at Cambridge and preached extensively in the Cambridgeshire area. Could Joanna have met him at one of his sermons, or were they introduced? What did Henry Bromley think of Joanna Vassa when he met her? Was he struck by the fact that she was of mixed heritage? Was he aware that she had a substantial inheritance? Had he known about Equiano, her father? Their marriage is mentioned in his obituary (1878):
In the meantime he had married Miss Joanna Vassa, daughter of the then well known and still well remembered Gustavas Vassa, the African. This lady always retained a high place, not only in Mr Bromley's regards, but in the admiration of his father's family. It was a very happy union.

In June 1821 Bromley was ordained as Minister at the Independent Chapel in Appledore, Devon, and married Joanna in London 2 months later. The witnesses to the marriage were Catherine Bromley, Henry's sister, and John Audley, which suggests that his relationship to Joanna was more than just executor. They lived in Devon for 5 years, moving to serve at the Congregational Church in Clavering, Essex.
As a minister's wife, Joanna would have played a significant, but undocumented and unrecognised role. She would have been responsible for Sunday school, (there are records of her helping to provide books) for church administration, assisting her husband with the congregation and evangelising the population.
In 1845 Bromley resigned, stating that
The conviction I feel that Mrs Bromley's health is very seriously suffering from the injurious influence of the situation, as connected with the peculiar state of her constitution, and the fear I entertain that passing another winter here would so fix some complaints from which she suffers, as to render their removal afterwards very difficult if not impossible.
There is nothing in the church records or Henry Bromley's letters that shed any light on what on what this 'situation' was. What was the 'peculiar state of her constitution'? Was she suffering from an illness? Had she had a nervous breakdown? Had she suffered from racism? We don't know how she was then being received by the people in Clavering - were they courteous to her while out with her husband, or shun her when she was on her own? Was she the victim of a vicious whisper campaign that her husband was unaware of, or chose to ignore?
We only have Bromley's account of Joanna's illness. His autobiography makes reference to it; again only mentioning that it was concern for her health that led him to resign.
Once they leave Clavering, Bromley moves to London and Joanna to Stowmarket in Suffolk, near where his parents live. There is no record of them living together again. Sometime in the 1850s she returns to London, living in Hackney, where she died on 10th March 1857, of uterine disease, which could have been brought on by fibroids or endometriosis, and sub acute peritonitis, which is inflammation of the membrane which lines the cavity of the abdomen. Could this have been the condition that caused Bromley to resign from Clavering? Uterine disease could also have been cancer, or complications from a birth, although there is no record that suggests that Joanna ever had a child. She was buried in Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington, London, with her husband.
Joanna Bromley appears to have lived an unremarkable life. It is impossible to get a sense of what she was like because no descriptions have been found, no letters, no articles. Did she write anything about herself, a diary, a narrative? Were she and Henry really happy together? Was she persecuted because she was mixed heritage?
As the search continues, and until we find her written account, we will never know.

www.equiano.org

By Angelina Osborne.

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