Martha Rand Morse was born in Massachusetts and became involved with the management of the Industrial School for Girls (ISFG) when it was in the process of relocating from Winchester to a new site on Centre Street in Dorchester in 1858 (photo at left above). The following year, she married Frederick W.G. May. The couple moved to 69 Adams Street where they remained for the rest of their lives.
Martha’s tenure as a manager of the ISFG lasted less than a decade, but she made a significant contribution to its development as she was instrumental in overseeing the maintenance of the building and in dealing with such routine problems as a leaky cupola and overflowing cistern. The Mays lived within walking distance from the school, and Frederick, too, was actively involved. His interest may have been linked to his work as a hardware dealer and manufacturing agent. Proximity allowed for the students to visit the Mays’ home and for Martha to conduct regular checks on their activities at the school.
May resigned from her role as a manager in 1865 while expecting her fourth child, but she continued to help fund the institution until 1883. Martha May is buried at Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, as is Frederick who died a decade later.
May has two granddaughters of note: Martha May Eliot (1891-1978) and Abigail Adams Eliot (1892-1992), children of May’s daughter Mary Jackson May and Christopher Eliot, a minister at the First Parish Church of Meeting House Hill. Martha was a highly respected pediatrician and an acclaimed leader in the field of public health. Her sister Abigail excelled in the field of education.
Martha May Eliot (see right) attended Radcliffe College and majored in classical literature while at the same time completing her premed training in 1913. She applied to Harvard Medical School, which did not admit women at that time. Consequently, she enrolled at Bryn Mawr for a year of study, where she met Ethel Collins Dunham. Both went on to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and the two became life partners. Eliot met extraordinary success in her career in medicine.
Eliot was appointed director of the Children’s Bureau’s, Division of Child and Maternal Health in1924 and simultaneously collaborated with Edwards A. Park of Yale Medical School in developing a protocol for preventing rickets, a debilitating bone condition in children. Eliot was named the president of the American Public Health Association, the first woman to be elected to the post. In 1958, she was awarded the Association’s Sedgewick Memorial Medal, also a first for a woman. She also served as chair of the Harvard School of Public Health’s department of child and maternal health. Among her many additional honors were the Howland Medal given by the American Pediatric Society and the creation of the Martha May Eliot Award by the American Public Health Association, which is given to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the fields of child and maternal health care.
Abigail Adams Eliot (see left), also attended Radcliffe College and then served as a social worker for five years after graduation. She became disillusioned with the field and decided to continue her studies, first at Oxford University and later at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she earned her doctorate in 1930. Specializing in early childhood education, she helped create the National Association for Nursery Education, served as an advisor to the Roosevelt administration’s depression era nursery schools for poor children, and a consultant for a program to provide day care to working families contributing to the war effort during World War II.
During the 1950s, she became involved with the Tufts University establishment of what became known as the Eliot-Pearson School. She continued teaching at various institutions including Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena, California. Her former Radcliffe classmate, Anna E. Holman, also a teacher as well as a poet, was her lifelong partner. The couple lived together in Concord until Anna’s death in 1969. Abigail died at age 100 after a life of service to the education of young children, a field that she helped establish.
