Ellen Murray

Penn Center Collections

Quick Facts

Significance:

Founder of Penn School, teacher, principal, abolitionist

Place of Birth:

St. John, New Brunswick, Canada

Date of Birth:

January 13, 1834

Place of Death:

St. Helena Island, SC

Date of Death:

January 14, 1908

Place of Burial:

St. Helena Island, SC

Cemetery Name:

Brick Baptist Church Cemetery

Ellen Murray was an abolitionist, teacher, and founder of the Penn School, a historic freedmen’s school first established in 1862 to teach formerly enslaved people on St. Helena Island, South Carolina. Together with Laura M. Towne, another abolitionist and founder of the Penn School, Murray devoted her life to educating freed people and left a remarkable impact on the lives of so many in South Carolina through more than a half-century of education. 

Murray was born in St. Johns, New Brunswick, Canada on January 13, 1834. Her father died when Ellen was only two years old, leaving behind enough wealth for his three daughters to receive education in Europe. Ellen was fluent in English, French, and German. The family bought a home in Newport, Rhode Island, where Ellen gained experience as a teacher. It was in Newport that she met Laura M. Towne of Philadelphia, perhaps when Towne came to speak to local Rhode Island Quakers about abolitionism. Their meeting in Newport would be the start of a lifelong friendship. 

On November 7, 1861, Union forces captured the Port Royal Sound area, including numerous Sea Island plantations and the town of Beaufort. Local white planters fled the area, leaving approximately 10,000 formerly enslaved people still living on these islands. When news of the capture of Port Royal reached Northern cities, abolitionist societies sprang into action and organized relief commissions. Among the first abolitionists to arrive in Beaufort in the spring of 1862 was Laura Towne.   

Shortly after arriving in the Port Royal area, Laura Towne wrote in her diary on April 17, 1862: “I shall want Ellen’s help. We shall be strong together – I shall be weak apart,” testifying to the friendship the two women shared. Ellen arrived in Beaufort County on June 8, 1862. A few weeks later she taught her first classes at the Oaks Plantation, and later that year, in August, Ellen made arrangements to start teaching in a church on St. Helena Island, known as the Brick Church. Built in 1855 by enslaved people – whose fingerprints can be seen in the brick to this day – the Brick Church would be the start of over a century of education on St. Helena Island. 

Ellen would teach the youngest and eldest children, while Laura taught the “middle” group of children. Later in the day, Ellen would teach the adults while Laura attended to the medical needs of newly freed people on St. Helena. During her time in South Carolina, Ellen wrote poetry and published it in the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Joining Ellen Murray and Laura Towne in the fall of 1862 was Charlotte Forten, a free African American teacher and abolitionist from Philadelphia. On October 31, 1862, Charlotte wrote in her diary of Ellen: “I like Miss Murray so much, … She is one of the most whole-souled warm-hearted women I ever met.” Charlotte would stay on St. Helena Island until May of 1864.

In January 1865, a prefabricated building sent by the Pennsylvania Freedmen’s Relief Commission arrived on St. Helena Island. Murray and Towne moved their school into this building, naming the new school Penn School after Pennsylvania founder William Penn. Penn School would serve as a sort of high school on St. Helena Island, with a curriculum including “reading, spelling, writing, geography, grammar, and arithmetic.” In 1868, Murray and Towne began teacher training at Penn and by 1870, several teachers trained at Penn had been hired by the state of South Carolina to teach in public schools. Teacher training would remain an important part of Penn School’s curriculum throughout its history. 

As the will to prosecute Reconstruction waned in the 1870s, so too did the funds from Northern aid societies. The Pennsylvania Freedmen’s Relief Association closed in 1871, “entrusting its last funds to the Benezet Society of Germantown,” which continued supporting Penn School until 1877. When funds grew short Murray and Towne refused salaries to keep the school funded. After the death of Laura’s brother, Henry, in 1875 the funds left in his will were used to help keep the school afloat in lean times. Both the families of Ellen Murray and Laura Towne donated funds to Penn School. 

Despite the financial hardships of the late 1800s, Murray and Towne persevered. With the school and its curriculum firmly established, Penn School continued educating freed people on St. Helena Island throughout the nineteenth century. Shortly before her death in 1901, Laura Towne invited Hollis Burke Frissell of the Hampton Institute, an industrial school in Virginia, to take over Penn School. Ellen, not satisfied with the transition from formal education to industrial education, attempted to curb the new industrial curriculum in her capacity as principal.  

Ellen Murray died on Tuesday, January 14, 1908. She continued teaching up until the day before her death. A memorial service for Ellen Murray was held in Darrah Hall, on the campus of the Penn School, on January 17, 1908. There, family, friends, students, and associates paid their respects to Murray and a half-century commitment to education on St. Helena Island. Ellen Murray was laid to rest “beneath a wide spreading oak tree near the brick church…,” marked by a memorial which reads “Ellen Murray – A Founder, Principal, Teacher, Penn School 1862-1908, Rev. 14. 13.” Her memorial, as well as Laura Towne’s, overlook the location where their schoolhouse, and their life’s work, stood. 

References

"Funeral Services of Miss Ellen Murray," Beaufort Gazette (Beaufort, SC), Jan. 23, 1908. 

"St. Helena's Veteran of Forty-Five Years Service," Beaufort Gazette (Beaufort, SC), Jan. 16, 1908. 

Butchart, Ronald E., “Laura Towne and Ellen Murray: Northern Expatriates and the Foundations of Black Education in South Carolina, 1862-1908,” South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times Vol. 2, edited by Marjorie Julian Spruill, Valinda W. Littlefield, and Joan Marie Johnson. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009. 

Forten, Charlotte L. The Journal of Charlotte L. Forten. Edited by Ray Allen Billington. New York: The Dryden Press, 1953. 

Robbins, Gerald. “Laura Towne: White Pioneer in Negro Education, 1862-1901,” Journal of Education 143, no. 4 (1961): 40-54. 

Towne, Laura M. Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne: Written from the Sea Islands of South Carolina 1862-1864. Edited by Rupert Sargent Holland. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1912. 

Wolf, Kurt J. “Laura M. Towne and the Freed People of South Carolina, 1862-1901.” The South Carolina Historical Magazine 98, no. 4 (1997): 375–405.