Martha S. Hussey

Martha Swain Hussey, known to her family and neighbors as Mattie, was born on Nantucket on March 5, 1853, according to the Howe School's own catalogue (Hazen's genealogy gives the year as 1850). She was the daughter of the Rev. Christopher Coffin Hussey, who came to Billerica in 1866 as minister of the First Parish, and of Lydia Coffin Hussey, both of old Nantucket Quaker families. Her older sister Elizabeth had died in 1860, and her sister Dora married George P. Adams of Lowell in 1869.

She entered the Howe School in 1866, the year the family arrived in town, and graduated with the class of 1869. She returned to the school as its assistant teacher from 1875 to 1877 (the catalogue of 1880 lists her among the assistant teachers as "Mattie S. Hussey, Billerica"). She then studied at the Boston University School of Oratory, from which she graduated in 1879, and the 1897 catalogue of Howe alumni describes her simply as a graduate of Boston University and a teacher.

When a recently enacted law allowed women to register to vote for school committee, Martha S. Hussey and her mother were among the Billerica women who applied, and Hazen printed their names in his History of Billerica (1883). In 1890 she was herself elected to the School Committee for a three-year term, the first woman to appear on the board in the surviving town reports. In 1890 to 1891 she was the committee's auditor and had charge, as sub-committee, of the Center and Hill schools. With Charles H. Kohlrausch Jr. and Joseph S. Holt she signed the report praising the new district superintendency under George M. Wadsworth as "a new era in the welfare of our schools" and urging the town to consolidate its outlying district schools with those at the Centre in a new four-room schoolhouse.

The next year's report, signed by Holt, Dr. O. A. Flint and Hussey, welcomed the new superintendent Lewis T. McKenney, thanked the town for voting money for the new schoolhouse at the Centre, described the arrangement under which the Howe School took the place of a town high school, and argued that "good teachers must receive good pay." It closed with the hope that "each citizen may feel a personal responsibility" for raising the standard of the schools.

In the First Parish she was for many years superintendent of the Sunday school. Martha Hill Sage, writing in 1898, remembered her as "a faithful teacher in our school" who "is affectionately remembered by many here to-day." She died in 1896, a year before her father.

References

1. Catalogue of the Howe High School (1897), p. 17, class of 1869: born Nantucket March 5, 1853, graduated Boston University, teacher, died 1896
2. Catalogue of the Howe High School (1897), list of assistant teachers: Martha S. Hussey, Billerica, 1875-77
3. Catalogue of the Howe High School (1897), later education of students: Boston University School of Oratory, 1879
4. Catalogue of Howe School (1880), graduates of 1869: Mattie S. Hussey
5. Catalogue of Howe School (1880), teachers: Mattie S. Hussey, Billerica, 1875-7
6. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 315, women registered to vote for school committee (Lydia C. and Martha S. Hussey)
7. Report of the School Committee, 1890-91: organization (Martha S. Hussey, Auditor, term expires 1893; sub-committee for Center and Hill schools)
8. Report of the School Committee, 1890-91 (signed Kohlrausch, Holt, Martha S. Hussey)
9. Report of the School Committee, 1891-92 (signed Holt, Flint, Martha S. Hussey)
10. Sage, Old Families of the First Parish (1898), p. 18: Miss Mattie Hussey, teacher and Sunday school superintendent