Ruth Holmes Whitehead (10 October 194729 August 2023) was a Canadian historian, ethnologist, and museum curator at the Nova Scotia Museum.
Biography Ruth Holmes Whitehead was born on 10 October 1947 in Charleston, South Carolina, to parents Ruth Holmes Humphreys Everett and Hobart Ray Everett. She attended Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, graduating with a degree in Spanish. She moved to Canada in 1968 before returning to Charleston to continue her education, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts from the College of Charleston.
Whitehead moved to Nova Scotia in 1972, where she took a position with the Nova Scotia Museum. She worked there until her retirement in 2003, following which she was named Curator Emeritus and remained as a research associate until 2019. Across her career, she wrote or co-authored 18 books, and contributed articles to a variety of magazines and academic journals. Her book Black Loyalists: Southern Settlers of Nova Scotia's First Free Black Communities won the Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing in 2014.
In 1995, Whitehead was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws by St. Francis Xavier University. She was inducted as a member of the Order of Nova Scotia in 2014.
Whitehead died in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 29 August 2023. Her funeral took place at the Halifax Shambhala Centre on 1 September.
Publications
References
External links Ruth Holmes Whitehead at 49th Shelf, Association of Canadian Publishers