Mary’s mother ran Blundell Hall, one of the finest hotels … She learned nursing skills from her mother. In 1836, Mary married Edwin Seacole but the marriage was short-lived as he died in 1844. It was a difficult period for Mary as the year previous her boarding house had burnt down. After returning to Jamaica, Seacole cared for her "old indulgent patroness" through an illness, finally returning to the family home at Blundell Hall after the death of her patroness (a woman who gave financial support to her) a few years later. In 1836 Mary Grant married Edwin Horatio Seacole, and during their trips to the Bahamas, Haiti, and Cuba she augmented her knowledge of local medicines and treatments. Mrs. Pratt was accepted and started training in 1946. Pratt came to London to train at the Nightingale School, seeing Nightingale as a model. After her husband’s death in 1844, she gained further nursing experience during a cholera epidemic in Panama , and, after returning to Jamaica , she cared for yellow fever victims, many of whom were British soldiers. She also travelled the Caribbean, visiting the British colony of New Providence in The Bahamas, the Spanish colony of Cuba, an… Unfortunately, the marriage lasted only eight years, as her husband died in October 1844. Seacole married Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole in November 1936. It was her husband, a Nigerian pharmacist who had begun medical training in London, at Bart’s, who made the approach to the matron on her behalf. Seacole then worked alongside her mother, occasionally being called to provide nursing assistance at the British Army hospital at Up-Park Camp. Her mother died shortly later, plunging her into a period of grief.