Mother Solomon

Margaret Grey Eyes Solomon (November 1816 – August 18, 1890), better known as Mother Solomon, was a Wyandot nanny and cultural activist. Solomon was born along Owl Creek in Marion County, Ohio, to a Wyandot chief father. In 1822, her family moved to the Big Spring Reservation in Wyandot County, where elders relayed oral tradition to her. She learned housekeeping and English at a mission school and began attending the Wyandot Mission Church. Solomon married David Young, a Wyandot man, in 1833 and had several children with him, some of whom died before 1843. That year, the Indian Removal Act forced the Wyandots to move to Kansas. Illness and poor living conditions were initially widespread in the new community. Solomon had more children in Kansas, though by 1860, her husband and remaining children had died.

Solomon became homesick after marrying the Wyandot sheriff John Solomon in 1860. Alongside her nephew, the Solomons relocated to around Upper Sandusky, Ohio, in 1865. When John died in 1876, she began babysitting children, and her village nicknamed her "Mother Solomon". Solomon promoted Wyandot culture and advocated for the restoration of the run-down mission church. During its rededication in 1889, she sang a Wyandot translation of the hymn "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" and impressed many attendees with her stage presence. Solomon died in 1890. She was a popular local figure, and her death was widely reported in newspapers. The Wyandot County Museum has since displayed her belongings.

Early life and education Margaret Grey Eyes Solomon was born in November 1816 along Owl Creek in Marion County, Ohio. (Variations on her surname include "Greyeyes" and "Grey-Eyes", sometimes with the spelling "Gray".) Her father was the Wyandot chief John "Squire" Grey Eyes, and her mother was a Wyandot woman named Eliza. Solomon's given name was of Christian origin.

Squire sought to teach Indigenous knowledge to Solomon, and he encouraged family visits to culturally significant sites. For example, when Solomon was four, Squire brought her to the Olentangy Indian Caverns. She learned that generations of Wyandots held meetings or hid from enemies in the caves, and understood the importance of visiting the site. Solomon and her family worked as hunters and traders along village footpaths. In 1822, they moved into a small cabin on the Big Spring Reservation, located north of Carey in Wyandot County. and at age 13, she was improving her English spelling and reading. As a child, Solomon also attended the nearby Wyandot Mission Church.

Two of Solomon's siblings married Wyandots from the Detroit River area, and her family kept close relationships with the community there. Solomon married David Young, a Wyandot man who had adopted a Christian name after becoming a Methodist preacher. Their wedding occurred in the mission church on February 4, 1833. Solomon and Young had at least three children in Ohio.

Wyandot removal to Kansas President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act, a major law in his project of Indian removal, was passed in 1830 and required Indigenous communities to move west of the Mississippi River. Commissioners sent by the federal government to negotiate treaties began pressuring the Wyandots to leave, and many nearby Lenapes and Shawnees moved west. However, Wyandot scouting parties out west in 1831 and 1834 rejected the land tracts proposed by the government. Squire was against removing and only conceded when a Wyandot council voted two-thirds in favor. The Wyandots secured within Kansas City, Kansas, then reluctantly signed a removal treaty in March 1842.

On July 12, 1843, Solomon gathered alongside hundreds at the Wyandot Mission Church. They grieved, spread flowers across the adjacent cemetery, and heard Squire give a farewell speech. were stolen from Solomon in September 1848, which she attributed to emigrants traveling the Oregon Trail. That fall, further thefts occurred involving 30 of her pigs, worth $90 in total. (Equivalent to $ in The three returned to Ohio in 1865 and settled in a small cabin she had previously lived in, located north of Upper Sandusky along the Sandusky River.) According to the historian Kathryn Magee Labelle, "there was little left of the old reservation." The community council house had burned down in 1851, and the roof and walls of the mission church had begun to collapse, although several grave sites and houses remained.

John worked as a tailor until his death on December 14, 1876. In 1881, Solomon briefly visited her relatives in Kansas, who had sent many invitations. General William H. Gibson was among the ministers who gave speeches, and Elnathan C. Gavitt, the only former missionary in attendance, spoke fondly about his time there.

Solomon, now 72, was the only Wyandot removed in 1843 to attend. She sang a Wyandot translation of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing", a hymn she had learned at the church. The Urbana Daily Citizen J. W. Henley called her an "object of great interest". (Equivalent to $ in Solomon's death was widely reported in local newspapers, which emphasized her father's role as chief, her removal to Kansas and return to Ohio, and her work as a nanny.) Labelle refers to the coverage as a "momentary acknowledgement of [Wyandot] resilience in Ohio", but also notes that many stories falsely called Solomon "the last of the Wyandots", which reflected the misconception and romanticization of Native Americans as a vanishing people.

Solomon was a popular local figure. According to the archivist Thelma R. Marsh, she was "almost a legend" when she died. Many adults attested to being raised by Solomon, and some deemed it an honor. Labelle believes that her attainment of the honorific "Mother", rather than the lesser "Sister" or "Auntie", indicates success in her work. She describes Solomon as part of a 19th-century wave of Midwestern mothers who helped reconcile settler and Indigenous cultures through community service and caregiving.

Studies about Solomon are limited, though an exception is Marsh's 1984 children's book Daughter of Grey Eyes: The Story of Mother Solomon. It spans 60 pages and draws from archival material, journal articles, and family interviews. On the morning of August 12, 1990, Marsh led a service at the mission church commemorating the centennial of Solomon's funeral. In October 2016, the church held an event celebrating the bicentennial of missionaries in Ohio, and Solomon's life was recounted during a tour of the cemetery attended by 192 people.

In February 1931, the Wyandot County Museum displayed a century-old chair built by Solomon that featured a woven shagbark hickory seat and no nails. They dedicated a glass case to her in May 1971 with her glasses, smoking pipe, beaded purse, candle molds, woven basket, and portrait. In addition, the McCutchen Overland Inn Museum displayed her saddle in the Anderson General Store in May 2021.