A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Ramsay, Martha Laurens
RAMSAY, MARTHA LAURENS,
Was born In Charleston, South Carolina, November 3rd., 1759. She was the daughter of Henry Laurens, whose ancestors were Huguenots. She spent ten years in England and France, during the latter part of which time she resided at Paris with her father, who was acting there as minister plenipotentiary from the United States. While there, her father gave her five hundred guineas, the greater part of which she employed in purchasing French Testaments for distribution, and in establishing a school. She returned to Charleston in 1785, and in 1787 married Dr. David Ramsay. . Mrs. Ramsay was a woman of piety, learning, and great benevolence. She assisted her husband in his literary pursuits, fitted her sons for college, and performed all her domestic duties in the most exemplary manner, showing herself a pattern for her sex, and proving how salutary the enlightened moral influence of woman may become. She died in June, 1811, aged fifty-one.