A scholar who researched Bermuda National Hero Mary Prince is speaking to students about the slave turned abolitionist hero.

Margot Maddison-MacFadyen, who graduated in May 2017 with a PhD from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, is carrying out a Bermuda-based postdoctoral research project focused on Ms Prince and Mary Elsie Tucker’s work for Bermuda slave owners growing onions.

Dr Maddison-MacFadyen, who is presenting at public schools this week, will give a talk for the general public about her research findings as part of the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs’ Emancipation programming in July.

Ms Prince endured slavery in Bermuda, where she was born, and in the Turks and Caicos before she broke free.

But she gained fame when her autobiography, The History of Mary Prince, was published in 1831.

The book, the first account of the life of a black woman to be published in the UK, detailed her experiences of slavery and helped to galvanise the anti-slavery movement.

Dr Maddison-MacFadyen said her research has revealed that Ms Prince was also known by two other names — Mary James and Molly Wood.

She explained: “Mary Prince is the name she may have taken to defy her slave-owners, if not all slave owners.

“Usually, a slave’s surname was the surname of her or his slave-owner, but Mary Prince chose to take the first name of her father as her surname.

“Mary James is Mary Prince’s married name, and this is the name of which Moravian authorities would have approved. Molly Wood is how her final slave-owner John Adams Wood Jr listed Mary Prince in the Slave Registers of former British Colonial Dependencies for Antigua.”

Dr Maddison-MacFadyen added: “I believe he put down ‘Molly’ because both his wife and a daughter were also named Mary and Molly is a moniker for Mary.

“Also, in the Antigua section of Mary Prince’s testimony she indicates her name to be Molly.”

Kim Dismont-Robinson, Bermuda Folklore Officer, said it was hoped Dr Maddison-MacFadyen would uncover what happened to Ms Prince after her story was published.

Dr Dismont-Robinson said: “The assumption was that she died in England, but Dr Maddison-MacFadyen had reason to believe that she had managed to return to Antigua.”