Martha Berry

Martha McChesney Berry (October 7, 1865 – February 27, 1942) was an American educator and the founder of Berry College in Rome, Georgia.

Early years Martha McChesney Berry was the daughter of Capt. 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, 1865, in Berry Cove in Jackson County, Alabama, but her family relocated to Rome, Georgia, when she was an infant. Thomas Berry was a partner in Berrys and Company, a wholesale grocery and cotton brokerage business in Rome.

In 1871, he purchased Oak Hill, a working farm on the Oostanaula River, approximately one and one-half miles north of Rome. Miss Berry grew up in this home along with her five sisters, including Eugenia, two brothers, and three orphaned cousins. Her early education was conducted through private tutors. She attended the Edgeworth School, a finishing school in Baltimore, Maryland; it was the only formal education she received. Martha Berry lived at Oak Hill for the remainder of her life.

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 she devoted her life to developing the schools that would eventually become Berry College.

In the late 1890s, she constructed a small, whitewashed school on 83 acres given to her by her father, and began to teach Sunday school classes to local children. She also taught in an abandoned Possum Trot Church, which still stands on the Berry College campus.

Boys' and girls' schools 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, Berry had only five boarders, but the need was apparent and in 1909 she opened the Martha Berry School for Girls. Both schools offered high school-level education and were open to those willing to study hard and work for the school. Her teachings focused on the "head, heart, and hands" of her students: The ability to learn, work and the will to do both well. Her motto, taken from the Gospel of Mark, was and still is the motto of the college "Not to be ministered unto but to minister."

Berry College In 1926, she established Berry Junior College, which in 1930 expanded into a four-year school. In recognition of Berry's contribution to education, she was inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement in March 1992 as one of the first five inductees.