Martha Berry
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Martha McChesney Berry (October 7, 1866 – February 27, 1942) was an United States educator and the founder of Berry College, Georgia.
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[edit] Early Years
Martha McChesney Berry was the daughter of Lt. Thomas Berry, a veteran of the Mexican-American War and American Civil War, and Frances Margaret Rhea, a daughter of an Alabama planter. Berry was born on October 7, 1866 in Alabama but her family relocated to Rome, Georgia when she was an infant. Martha Berry lived in the Rome area for the remainder of her life. Thomas Berry operated a plantation and was a partner in Berrys and Company, a wholesale grocery and cotton brokerage business in Rome. Young Berry lived at the plantation, called Oak Hill, with her five sisters, two brothers and three orphaned cousins. Her early education was conducted through private tutors and she attended the Edgeworth School, a finishing school in Baltimore, Maryland. This was the only formal education she received.
[edit] The Berry Schools
The founding of the Berry Schools was inspired by Berry's desire to help the children of poor landowners and tenant farmers in Georgia, who did not have access to quality education. As a consequence of this desire, Martha Berry never married and devoted her live to developing the schools that would eventually become Berry College. In the late 1890s she constructed a small whitewashed school on eighty-three acres of land given to her by her father and began to teach Sunday school classes to local children. She also taught in an abandoned church at Possum Trot, which still stands on the Berry College campus. The Sunday school classes eventually turned into day school activities and Berry opened a boarding facility for boys called Boys' Industrial School on January 13, 1902. At the time, she had only five boarders but the need was apparent and in 1909 she opened the Martha Berry School for Girls. Both schools offered lower level high school education and were open to those willing to study hard and work for the school. Her teachings focused on the hands, head and hearts of her students: The ability to learn, work and the will to do both well. Her motto was and still is the motto of the college, "Not to be ministered unto but to minister." In 1926 she established Berry Junior College, which in 1930 expanded into a four-year school. The high schools closed in 1942 after Berry's death.
[edit] Impact
Martha Berry had many supporters during her lifetime, such as Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie, Ellen Louise Axson Wilson (wife of President Woodrow Wilson) and Henry Ford. Henry Ford was a generous benefactor to the schools and provided the funds necessary to build the "castle" like dorm complex at the college. The dorms are named after his wife and mother, Clara and Mary.
