Introduction & a Highlight of Martha Berry

Hello gorgeous and welcome to my blog, You Go Girl! This blog is all about female empowerment and highlighting the women that inspire us all. I want to create a space in which you feel celebrated and loved as the incredible woman that you are!

Each week I will post a new blog highlighting a woman that I admire, in hopes that you can learn about some of the amazing women who are doing incredible things in the world. Also, I want to hear from you! If you have any role models that you would like to have featured on the blog, send me a message in the comments section on the homepage.

Our first featured woman is none other than Martha Berry. Would I even be a good Berry College student if I didn't highlight its founder?

Martha Berry was born in 1865 into a wealthy family residing in Rome, Georgia. Because of her family's wealth, Martha was able to receive an education through her governess and home tutors before attending the Edgeworth School in Baltimore, Maryland. However, it didn't take her long to realize that not everyone in Rome was afforded that same privilege.

One Sunday afternoon in the late 1890s, Martha met three young boys traveling across her family's property. Upon talking to them she learned that they had not received any education through school or Sunday school. She then entertained them with Bible stories that they had never heard of before. They returned every Sunday, and soon Martha had filled an entire small cabin with families that came to listen to her teach.

Letting her passion for education drive her, Martha built additional buildings to better house her students. She decided that her students would be best educated if they could live in the same place that they were learning, so she built dormitories. In 1902, she opened the Boys' Industrial School, that was later known as the Mount Berry School for Boys. Upon the success of this school, she opened the Martha Berry School for Girls in 1909. These schools started as high schools that directly catered to the needs of those living in poor agricultural Northwest Georgia by offering vocational, agricultural, and mechanical training.

She founded Berry Junior College in 1926, which later became the four year college that exists today. The high schools were closed in the years after her death in 1942, but Berry College Elementary and Middle School still exist today.

Martha was proficient in networking, receiving financial support for her schools from Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Emily Vanderbilt Hammond, president Theodore Roosevelt, and president Woodrow Wilson's wife, Ellen Axson Wilson.

Martha never attended college, but due to her exceptional work in promoting accessible education, she was awarded honorary doctorate degrees from eight colleges and universities. She has been honored with numerous awards, including being one of the first inductees into Georgia Women of Achievement.

I look up to Martha Berry as a woman that used her privilege and resources to empower those around her that did not have the same status as she did. She saw a need in her community and dove headfirst into action to see that this need was met. Her life's motto was a quote from the Bible in Mark 10:45, "Not to be ministered unto, but to minister".

Martha's life devoted to the service of others is absolutely inspiring. From the founding of the Berry schools in 1902 to her death in 1942, she did not stop giving of herself. She created the foundation for a school that is still carrying out her life's work today.

Because of the influence of Martha Berry's story on my life, I strive to work harder, love deeper, and always serve others. Is there a need in the lives of those around you that you can help meet? Is there a way that you can dig in deeper to love others more? Is there a passion in your life that you need to put more work into? Dig deep and look for these answers!

I'll leave you with this thought from Martha herself that is featured on a sign as you drive through the exit gate of Berry College.

"I pray that I may leave the world more beautiful than when I found it."

Now let's go out and make this world a little more beautiful.

You go girl,

Maddie