Martha Ellicott Tyson was an Elder of the Quaker Meeting in Baltimore, anti-slavery and women's rights advocate, author of the first biography of Benjamin Banneker, and a founder of Swarthmore College. She was the great-great grandmother of state senator James A. Clark Jr.. She was inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 1988. He was married to Nathan Tyson, a merchant and the son of emancipator and abolitionist Elisha Tyson.
Early life and education
Tyson was born September 13, 1795 to George Ellicott and Elizabeth Ellicott, a well respected family of Maryland Quakers, the Ellicotts. The family homestead was a stone house built in 1789 near the Patapsco River and the family's mill. Her father often welcomed Native Americans to their home. One of seven children, she was born and raised in Ellicott's Mills, founded by her grandfather, Andrew Ellicott and his brothers. She accounted in her books visiting with chief Little Turtle in 1807 at Christmas when she was the age of twelve. Although she never completed formal schooling past primary education, she was well educated at home and fluent in French.
Marriage and children
In 1815, she married Nathan Tyson the son of Elisha Tyson, a Quaker and abolitionist of Baltimore, was the Baltimore Chamber of Commerce's first president. He was also the first president of the Baltimore Corn and Flour Exchange. He had a "gracious love story" with his wife and they had a relaxed attitude about some Quaker conventions. Tyson was described as a "woman of much sweetness and dignity of bearing, possessed of an exceedingly cultivated mind and many accomplishments." They had twelve children, ten of them to adulthood. Eight of their children made it to middle-age. Their children included James Tyson, Elizabeth Brooke Tyson Smith, Henry Tyson, Isabella, Frederic Tyson, Robert Tyson, and Lucy Tyson Fitzhugh. Tyson ensured that both her sons and daughters received a good education. Nathan died on January 6, 1867, and his funeral was held January 9, 1867. Leaders of the Baltimore Corn and Flour Exchange said of him, "the deceased presented to us, in his daily conduct, his known integrity, his uniform courtesy and goodness of heart".
She was a member of the Little Falls Meetinghouse in Harford County. At the age of 35, Tyson was chosen as an Elder of the Baltimore Quaker Meeting. When she was 66, she was appointed as a minister, although she had been working in that capacity informally for years. Tyson worked to improve educational opportunities for enslaved people and women and, with her husband, helped found the Fallston Public Library. At her suggestion, a committee on education was established at the Baltimore Yearly Meeting to prepare teachers and to focus on higher education of Quaker children. She was an abolitionist.
Swarthmore College
A strong supporter of Quaker and coeducation, Tyson was a key founder, along with Lucretia Mott, Edward Parrish, and Benjamin Hallowell, of Swarthmore College. She had tried unsuccessfully for ten years to found a college. Tyson and her husband tried a new approach when they hosted a meeting in their home of Quaker leaders from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. This meeting of 30 leaders propelled the movement to start the second coeducation college in the United States, providing new educational opportunities for women. Founded in 1860, just prior to the American Civil War, Swarthmore College was established to provide: "A better educated generation that could achieve freedom, peace, prosperity, and righteousness." The college opened in 1869. She began recruiting for women professors with the president of Vassar College in 1863, and she was on Swarthmore's Board of Managers.
Author and editor
Martha Tyson is also well known for her biographical accounts of the scientist, surveyor, and author Benjamin Banneker. As a free African-American, Banneker was a frequent visitor at Tyson's childhood home, sharing a mutual enthusiasm for learning with the family. Banneker, who lived about one mile from the Ellicotts, was mentored by Martha's father. It was rare for a woman to write a biography, and especially rare for a white woman to write a biography of a former slave. Tyson was eleven years old when Banneker died. She conducted interviews and compiled the material for two biographies, the second of which was edited by her daughter Anne Tyson Kirk, who sought advice from Frederick Douglass. The two biographies of Banneker are, Sketch in the Life of Benjamin Banneker, published in 1854, and the more complete biography, Benjamin Banneker: The African-American Astronomer, published posthumously in 1884. She also wrote A Brief Account of the Settlement of Ellicott's Mills and was a co-author, with Charles Worthington Evans and G. Hunter Bartlett, of American Family History: Fox, Ellicott, Evans. She also wrote memoirs of family members, like Joseph Ellicott, which was published by the Maryland Historical Society. Her father and Gerald T. Hopkins went to Fort Wayne, then part of the Northwest Territory, to meet with Native Americans. They were directed by the Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends. Hopkins kept a journal of the details of the trip, which she edited in 1862. She also wrote about the meetings that her father had with the United States government regarding the Native Americans.
Death and legacy
After having been ill for three months, Martha Ellicott Tyson died on March 5, 1873 at her home at 299 Madison Street in Baltimore. She was buried at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore. A poem was written about her and her portrait at Swarthmore College by John Russell Hayes entitled "A Portrait of Martha Ellicott Tyson". She was inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 1988.
