Joanna Vassa

Joanna was the daughter of the man who could claim to be Britain's first Black activist, Olaudah Equiano alias Gustavus Vassa. Equiano was shipped to England as a slave, served in the navy and obtained his freedom in 1766. He became a writer, Methodist and anti-slavery campaigner, and wrote a groundbreaking autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life Of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, published in 1789. Vassa married Susannah Cullen of Soham, Cambridgeshire and they had two daughters.

Joanna's sister, father and mother all died when she was a child and little is known of her younger days. She married the congregational minister Henry Bromley, and lived with him in Devon, Essex and finally Hackney, where she died in 1857.

Her grave was discovered in 2005 and listed by English Heritage.