The Jamison family

    In 1915, William Russell Clarke is recorded in newspaper articles claiming his partial Conestoga Indian descent. William Russell Clarke was also of Nanticoke descent, and is, according to our oral history, a descendant from those 26 Susquehannock families who remained with the Lenape, whom the Nanticoke heavily intermarried. His is the first modern record of the strong kinship ties between the Conestoga and the Nanticoke of Sussex county Delaware. These kinship ties were made stronger by the Jamison family, whose strongest proponent of Conestoga Susquehannock culture married a relative of William Russell Clarke.

The Jamison family (sometimes spelled “Jemison”) were recorded as “Indian” in the York county census of 1920. Winona Jamison dedicated her entire life to preserving and protecting the rights of not just Conestoga people, but also the Nanticoke community she married into. Winona was trained as a teacher and initially left the York county area to go teach at the Nanticoke Indian school in Sussex county Delaware. There she met and married Nanticoke member Oscar Wright. The couple were both recorded as being “of Indian descent” in newspaper announcements of their marriage, and their son, who was tragically stillborn, was also recorded as Native on his death certificate. Her passion to provide an education to American Indian children put our surviving tribe on the radar yet again. Famous anthropologist Frank Speck was studying the Nanticoke tribe at the time she was teaching there and quickly took notice of our tribe’s survival.

In 1942 she was featured in newspaper articles having been identified as a Conestoga descendant. She lived the rest of her life in Native communities, and advocated for the Conestoga and Nanticoke people until her death in 1978. Her family and descendants are enrolled in the tribe today, and continue her legacy of advocating for Indigenous people throughout the eastern United States and the Conestoga-Susquehannock people.