Woman of the Week

Postmaster Martha Elvira Stone is this week's Woman of the Week.   

• To learn about her by viewing her item record, please click on her image.  

• To read her biographical sketch in A Woman of the Century, please click on the highlighted page number to the left of ther image.

Martha Elvira Stone was born in North Oxford, Massachusetts on September 13, 1816.  She attended Oxford Classical School and Leicester Academy and then taught for many years. Martha and her cousin Clara Barton, another North Oxford native, were frequent correspondents throughout their lives.

Stone was appointed U.S. Postmaster for North Oxford on April 27, 1857 and served as the town's postmistress for over forty years. In addition to her work as postmistress, she aided soldiers during the Civil War and served as a member of the Oxford school board from 1870 to 1873. 

Genealogy was another of Martha's passions.  During the 1880s, she conducted extensive research for her mother's family's genealogy, The Learned Family, and also contributed to the Davis genealogy.

Since she was the oldest postmistress in the United States, Martha's image was exhibited at the World's Fair in 1896.

Martha passed away on January 9, 1900, and was buried in North Cemetery, Oxford, Massachusetts.