Dorothy Packwood, an artist and educator credited with guiding the Island’s first definitive histories of slavery in Bermuda, has died at the age of 93.

The wife of the late historian Cyril Packwood, Mrs Packwood was “a woman born before her time”, recalled her daughter, Cheryl Packwood.

Born in Canada, she took a train to New York in 1946 to become a teacher in the public school system as well as a librarian, putting herself through school.

“What I find amazing about her is that this was a black woman at a time when women like her were not supposed to do that,” her daughter said.

“Everybody saw her as quiet, but this was an incredibly competitive, career-driven woman. Being quiet does not mean that you don’t go for the stars.”

Along with his other books, her husband’s classic Chained on the Rock, which he published in 1976, owed its existence to her careful editing, Ms Packwood said.

“They were a team,” she said, describing her mother as a prolific reader and intensely literary person who preferred to read her Harlem Renaissance poetry instead of stories when she was a child.

She worked to put herself through school, obtaining a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts and a Masters in Library Science from Hunter College in New York.

She met her future husband in the New York public library, where she outranked him as a librarian.

“He fell madly in love with her and asked her to marry him — she said she needed time to think, and he always said that it took her two weeks,” Ms Packwood said. “She finally said yes, and he ended up being her heart and soul.”

Mr Packwood’s death in 1998 at the age of 67 devastated her, she added: “When he died was when she started dying,” she said.

Art, which she had first studied in Toronto, lay at the centre of her life, and she worked in every medium from painting to tapestry.

Mrs Packwood devised her own technique of oil painting and was adept at photography.

The couple moved to the Island in 1985, and she produced many works of art here, taken with the Island’s beauty.

Along with her husband, she was a keen scholar of African history and culture, and the two crisscrossed the continent.

Mr Packwood was a founding member of the African American Studies Programme, and the two lead cultural tours there for 20 years.

“Her favourite country there was Ethiopia — she loved the history, the artwork and people; she looked Ethiopian, so she related to the people there,” her daughter said.

Mrs Packwood died on September 30. A graveside memorial service will be held on Friday at 5.30pm at St Peter’s Cemetery on Secretary Road.