Schofield, Martha (1839–1916)

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Schofield, Martha (1839–1916)

American educator who devoted most of her life to the advancement of African-American education after the Civil War. Born on February 1, 1839, near Newton, Pennsylvania; died in Aiken, South Carolina, on January 13, 1916; daughter of Oliver Schofield and Mary Jackson Schofield; educated in a private school run by her uncle, John Jackson, in Sharon, Pennsylvania.

Martha Schofield was born on February 1, 1839, into a Pennsylvania family of committed abolitionists who frequently sheltered fugitive slaves escaping to the North prior to the Civil War. The third of five children and one of four daughters, she was raised in a Quaker tradition that promoted equality between and among individuals. In this community, women could hold positions of prominence in local religious meetings, and fugitive slaves were welcomed and aided in their quest for freedom.

After attending a private school in Sharon, Pennsylvania, Schofield went to teach at a Quaker school in Purchase, New York, and later at a school for African-Americans in Philadelphia. In 1865, she volunteered for the Pennsylvania Freedmen's Relief Association and was sent to the Sea Islands of South Carolina. There she established the Garrison School and ran it for a year with another Pennsylvanian, Mary A. Sharp . For the next two years, Schofield taught at several island schools, often finding herself engaged in struggles with incompetent or lazy representatives of the Freedmen's Bureau, an agency established in 1865 to aid newly emancipated slaves by providing food and medical supplies, creating schools, and distributing land.

In 1868, Schofield moved to Aiken, South Carolina, in part to improve her health after a bout of tuberculosis. There, she taught at a school that had been established two years previously by the Freedmen's Bureau. In 1870, she donated land for the construction of a new schoolhouse. By the late 1870s, the Freedmen's Bureau had ceased to provide educational funds for black institutions. Schofield took matters into her own hands and raised money to maintain the school in Aiken. In 1886, it incorporated as the Schofield Normal and Industrial School, becoming one of the premier black educational institutions in the South. Founded on the principles of Booker T. Washington, the school offered vocational training in farming, carpentry, blacksmithing, cooking, and sewing, as well as a traditional curriculum. Schofield remained associated with the school for the rest of her life. She died in Aiken at the age of 76.