Domestic Arts Inventor: Sybilla Masters

Detail of "The Fair Quaker," 1787, by 18th-century artist. Mezzotint print. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Public Domain

From our present perspective, we tend to see the inventions that followed the industrial revolution as much more impressive than those that came before it. But while the automobile, the plane, and the computer are impossible to ignore—“big” inventions (which often have nothing to do with literal size), there’s something to be said for inventions that make life a little easier without radically altering the way people live. Sybilla Masters, the first person to receive a British patent in Colonial America, was one of many who made such a contribution.

A Mysterious Upbringing

A colored etching of "Wet Quakers," 1813, by Thomas Rowlandson after James Green. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Public Domain

The only thing known about Master’s origins is that she was probably born in Bermuda at an unknown date in the 1670s. Her parents, William and Sarah Righton, emigrated to America in 1687. Nothing much is known, either, about her life in America spent on her father’s plantation in Burlington, West New Jersey, until she showed up as a witness in a court case in 1692. Then sometime over the next few years, she married a merchant named Thomas Masters.

Thomas Masters was, like the Rightons, a Quaker from Bermuda. The religious group was active on the island during the 17th century until the authorities gradually began passing laws against them, prompting many to seek refuge in New England. Mr. Masters thrived in his new country even more than most of his hardworking fellow Quakers, becoming quite wealthy.

The Masters moved into a large house in Philadelphia, where Thomas entered politics, even serving for two terms as the city’s mayor. Masters shared her husband’s entrepreneurial spirit, and while raising four children she practiced a “special talent for mechanical invention.”

A Big Idea

While tinkering, Masters hit upon a new way to make cornmeal. Until this time, corn kernels were crushed through a grinding method using millstones. Masters conceived of a device that used heavy pestles to pound the corn instead.

Although she had come up with an original idea, Masters was no dreamer. She rightfully feared that copycats would steal her work (a problem that would later plague Eli Whitney when he invented his cotton gin). Before the U.S. Constitution was ratified and a national patent office established, obtaining legal protections for an invention varied from colony to colony. In Pennsylvania there were none.

In 1712, therefore, Masters decided to travel to England and apply for a patent. In the mother country, though, she found the process just as difficult and ended up seeking a royal grant from King George himself.

The King’s Privy Council took their time weighing her request. Not one to twiddle her thumbs, Masters tinkered around and developed another idea. This one involved a new method of weaving palmetto leaves into straw hats and furniture. She acquired a monopoly on palmetto leaf importation and opened a shop in London, the West India Hat and Bonnet, to sell her novel products.

A Problem With the Patent

Sybilla Masters patent for cleaning and curing corn, Nov. 25, 1715. Public Domain

In 1715, three years after Masters applied for her patent, King George’s Privy Council decided in her favor—but granted the patent in her husband’s name. At this time, women had no legal standing to be recognized as inventors. The King awarded Thomas Masters the sole use of “a new invention found out by Sybilla, his wife, for cleaning and curing the Indian Corn growing in the colonies in America.”

A drawing of the design accompanied British patent number 401 to illustrate how it worked. A long wooden cylinder attached to a wheel, revolving like the crank of a musical box by means of either water or draft animal, dropped heavy pestles into two rows of mortars. After the pestles crushed the corn, the meal was transferred into inclined trays to dry. This more effectively pulverized cornmeal would find a wider application for being processed into different products.

The following year, King George granted Masters a second patent for her hat-making method. Patent number 403, though not accompanied by a drawing, was described as “a new way of working and staining in straw, and the plant and leaf of the palmetto tree, and covering and adorning hats and bonnets in such a manner as was never before done or practiced in England or any of our plantations.”

A portrait of a lady with a straw hat, 18th century, by a follower of Pierre Gobert. Oil on canvas. Public Domain

Another Business Venture

A few months after being granted her second patent, Masters closed her hat shop and moved back to Philadelphia. During her absence abroad, her husband had acquired a local grain mill. There, Masters began processing her uniquely pestled cornmeal, which she smartly branded as “Tuscarora Rice,” marketing it as a cure for consumption. While today we tend to associate such practices with unscrupulous frauds, in the age before modern medicine, it was common to sell food products as home remedies.

In combining inventive talent with shrewd business sense, Masters bears similarities with Thomas Edison. She knew that being a creative tinkerer was not enough—one has to understand how to corner the market.

Unfortunately, Tuscarora Rice did not sell as well as the West India Hat had, and the mill was repurposed. Masters died four years later, in 1720.

Worthy of Textbook Space

"The Fair Quaker," 1787, by 18th-century artist. Mezzotint print. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Public Domain

Although her business venture was not successful, her processing method spread and the brand name stuck. In a letter dated Jan. 20, 1787, Abigail Adam implored her sister, Mary Smith Cranch: “O pray by the next opportunity Send me a peck of Tuscorora Rice.” Abigail had spent time with Sybilla’s nieces in London and proceeded to tell her sister, “a good story about this said rice” and its creator, “an Ancestor of a family who now hold their Heads very high.”

Despite Adams’s efforts to spread the word about “old granddame” Masters, the pioneering inventor was mostly forgotten in the 19th century. An 1891 article in Scientific American described her contributions as “quaint.” Cornmeal? Bonnets?—Are such things worth slotting into the competitive space of a textbook?

Recently, the answer has been yes. As interest in lesser-known figures of the past has grown, Sybilla Masters is now included in many biographical compilations about science, taking her place among those who helped make life a little less hard. Here’s to the small inventions.

Would you like to see other kinds of arts and culture articles? Please email us your story ideas or feedback at [email protected]