Maria Louisa Bustill Robeson (November 8, 1853 – January 20, 1904) was a Quaker schoolteacher; the mother of Paul Robeson ; and the wife of the Reverend William Drew Robeson of Witherspoon Church in Princeton, New Jersey. She was born in 1853 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Charles Hicks Bustill (1816-1890) and Emily Robinson (c1815-before 1860). She was of mixed Igbo African, Lenni-Lenape Native American, and American Quaker descent. In the 1870s she attended Lincoln University. There she met and married William Drew Robeson I (1845-1918), around 1873, and they had the following children: Gertrude Lascet Robeson (1880) who died as an infant; William Drew Robeson II (1881-?) b. November 1881, who was a physician in Washington, District of Columbia; Marian M. Robeson (1894-1977) b. December 1, 1894, who married a Forsythe and moved to Philadelphia; Benjamin Robeson (1894-1966) b. September 1894, who was a reverend at the Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Harlem; J.B. Re...
ACCLAIMING PEOPLE OF IGBO DESCENT