Mathilda Taylor (name often interchanged in documentation, including her gravestone) was born in New Orleans on November 14, 1832. In 1869 she was baptized as a Catholic and married Abraham Beasley, a wealthy free black restaurant owner in Savannah.
She eventually moved to Savannah where worked as a seamstress and eventually an educator. Before the Civil War, Malthida went against the law of the time by secretly teaching enslaved people in her home.
After Abraham’s death in 1877, Mathilda continued her Catholic conversion into the order in earnest. She donated most of her worldly possessions, which included much of the land and homes that she had inherited, although she was gifted back a home on the property upon her eventual return.
She traveled to England to become a Franciscan nun and then made her way to Savannah once more. She was the foundress of a group of African-American sisters in Georgia known as the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis. She tried in earnest to connect her group with the Franciscan Order, but it never came to fruition.
She also launched one of the first orphanages in the country for African-American girls, called the St. Francis Home for Colored Orphans. It was part of her donated property stipulation that the home be created and it operated long after her death.
Mathilda Taylor Beasley died on December 20, 1903. She was found in her private chapel cradling an image of the Virgin Mary.
Atlanta Constitution December 22, 1903:
FUNERAL OF MOTHER BEASLEY
Woman Who Died Clasping Figure of Virgin Buried.
Savannah, Ga., December 21.—(Special.)
The funeral of Mother Matilda Beasley, the aged French-Indian woman who, as told in the Constitution today, died yesterday morning, with her arms clasped about the image of the Virgin Mary, before which she had crawled in her private chapel to die, took place this morning at 9:30 o’clock from the Sacred Heart church.
Father Gregory, of St. Benedict church, said mass. After the mass Father Aloysius, of the Sacred Heart church, spoke briefly of the life of Mother Beasley. He paid a high tribute to her pious life and charitable work. The pallbearers selected from the Mutual Aid Society of St. Benedict church, by request of Mother Beasley, were W. E. Bullock, T. S. Mitchell, C. F. Derara, Joseph King, William Desverges and James Dowes.
The interment was in the cathedral cemetery.
Now simply called the Catholic Cemetery, her grave is toward the back left of the property. The marble slab on the gravesite reads “Mother Mathilda Taylor Beasley, 1834-1903; First black Religious in Georgia.”
Savannah still honors Mother Mathilda today! There’s a Mother Mathilda Beasley Park, a historical marker at her original home in Savannah, and her cottage was eventually moved the park as part of the creation of a larger interpretive center. And in 2004 she was inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement Hall of Fame.
If you’ve never read about the remarkable women on the hall of fame list, started by Rosalynn Carter in the late 1980s, then please do so. So inspiring! Oh, and one of my favorite quilters and Athenians is on there—Harriet Powers. Her USPS stamp is currently trending. As it should be.
