Mary Telfair

Mary Telfair (January 28, 1791 – June 2, 1875) was an art collector, philanthropist and prominent citizen of Savannah, Georgia, United States. She bequeathed the foundation of the city's Telfair Museums, the first art museum of the American South, which has been in operation since 1886. It is housed in her former Regency-style home in Savannah's Telfair Square.

Early life Telfair was born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1791, the daughter of Edward Telfair, a Scot, who, at the age of 40, married 16-year-old Sarah Gibbons at her family's Sharon Plantation in 1774. Edward was halfway through his second term as governor of Georgia at the time of Mary's birth.

She was schooled in New York from the age of ten, quickly becoming a "voracious reader" of writers such as Hannah More and Lord Byron. Her most well-known legacy, however, is the Telfair Academy (located in her former home, designed by noted architect William Jay), which opened to the public in 1886. She is buried in Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery, although her plot is separate from her family due to "family rifts".