Last updated: March 22, 2024
Person
Laura Towne
Laura Matilda Towne was one of the first women responding to the call for aid workers to the South Carolina Sea Islands in April 1862. The need for and requirements of missionaries in the Port Royal Experiment was great, but so was the thirty-five year old’s motivation to help others and assist in bringing equality to American society.
Born in Pittsburgh, Towne was raised primarily by her father in Philadelphia and Boston after her mother’s early death. At a time when few women attended university, Towne pursued a medical degree at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, now Drexel University. There she studied under the celebrated German homeopathic physician, Dr. Constantine Herring, although it appears she left the college before earning her degree.
As a member of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia in the 1850s, Towne became aware of the evils of slavery through the fiery sermons of Reverend William Furness. His preaching was so impassioned and, for some, infuriating, that many left his church in protest. For those who remained, Rev. Furness required armed guards for his protection from angry protestors. Laura Towne was one member of the church who stayed, listened, and was inspired to act.
When the Port Royal Relief Committee of Philadelphia issued a plea for missionaries to attend the needs of 10,000 formerly enslaved people in Beaufort County, South Carolina, Towne was one of the first to volunteer. She arrived in early April 1862 to find disorder, disease and confusion, complaining that many freed people had no idea that they were free and many more were being mistreated by those charged with protecting them: “I can do, too, what I always wanted to come for specially, and that was to strengthen the anti-slavery element….The blessed soldiers, with all their wrongdoing, did this one good thing — they assured the negroes that they were free and must never again let their masters claim them.” Towne provided medical aid to an undernourished population devastated by cholera, yellow fever, smallpox, and dysentery. By May 1862, she had “a large practice as a doctor.” Even as late as January 1865, she observed the “children are all emaciated to the last degree and have such violent coughs and dysenteries that few survive. It is frightful to see such suffering among children.”
In addition to helping with medical care, housing, food, and mediation with military officials, Towne quickly realized that education was earnestly desired by the freedmen and their families. However, Towne’s path to becoming a teacher over a doctor was something she found difficult; “The day I kept school for Miss [Nelly] Winsor perhaps I was better for this work than teaching. In my doctoring I can do much good and give much advice that is wanted…. I see every day why I came and what I am to stay for.” Sending for her life companion, fellow abolitionist and teacher Ellen Murray, they started a class in a single room at the Oaks Plantation with nine scholars in June 1862, Towne assisted in between her doctor’s calls. But as the number of students grew to forty-seven, Towne and Murray saw the overwhelming need for more organized education and larger facilities.
In September 1862 they moved the school to the Brick Church, in the middle of St. Helena from where they established and financed a new educational facility. Towne named the new school The Penn School and had a school bell especially made inscribed with the words “Proclaim Liberty” to call students for miles around for classes. Towne and Murray were soon joined by Charlotte Forten, the first African American teacher in the area and together they created a rigorous classical curriculum based on the schools all three women had known in Philadelphia and Boston. The Penn School thrived, growing from a private boarding school to a community center offering academic training and programs on culture, social welfare, and civil rights.
With Ellen Murray by her side, Laura Towne devoted her life to the education of African Americans and the Penn School until her death on 22 February 1901. Her body was taken to Philadelphia for burial, but the people of Saint Helena Island were so grieved at her death that they erected a memorial to her in the graveyard of the Brick Church on the grounds of the Penn Center: “Erected by the people of St. Helena in memory of Laura M. Towne. Entered into Joy, St. Helena, S.C. 1901. Their beloved and venerated teacher, friend, helper and physician for forty years.”
Laura Towne left the Penn School to the Hampton Institute where it was chartered as the Penn Normal, Industrial and Agricultural School. Ellen Murray remained until her death on January 14, 1908. She was buried alongside Towne’s memorial on the campus of the Penn School in the graveyard of Brick Baptist Church.
References
Orville Vernon Burton (2014), Penn Center: A History Preserved. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Ronald E. Butchart (2010), “Laura Towne and Ellen Murray: Northern Expatriates and the Foundations of Black Education in South Carolina, 1862-1908”, in Margorie Julian Spruill, Valinda W. Littlefied and Joan Marie Johnson, eds. South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Antje Dallmann (2015), “’Lots of doctoring with great success’: Healthcare within the Port Royal Experiment and the work of Laura M. Towne”, in European Journal of American Studies, Vol. X, Issue no. 1, pp, 1-28.
Thavolia Glymph (2020), The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom and Nation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Rupert Sargent Holland, ed. (1912), Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne: Written from the Sea Islands of South Carolina, 1862-1884. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Riverside Press.
Willie Lee Rose (1998) Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Kurt J. Wolf, “Laura M. Towne and the Freed People of South Carolina, 1862-1901”. The South Carolina Historical Magazine, Vol. 98, No. 4 (Oct., 1997), pp. 375-405.