Background
Berry was born on October 7, 1866, in Berry Cove in Jackson County, Alabama, but her family relocated to Rome, Georgia, when she was an infant.
Martha Berry
Martha Berry with President Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt
Martha Berry’s house in Rome, Georgia
Martha Berry hold the Roosevelt Medal that was awarded to her by President Coolidge for her work advancing the welfare of women and children. (circa 1925)
Martha Berry Gravesite
Berry was born on October 7, 1866, in Berry Cove in Jackson County, Alabama, but her family relocated to Rome, Georgia, when she was an infant.
Her early education was conducted through private tutors, and she attended the Edgeworth School, a finishing school in Baltimore, Maryland, for less than a year. She received no other formal education but traveled around the country and to Europe on several occasions.
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 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.In 1926, she established Berry Junior College, which in 1930 expanded into a four-year school.