Woman of the Week – Sybilla Masters

For the next few months, we’ve decided to dig into the CR4 archives and expand upon some blog posts from 2007. Back then, we published a series of lists of women inventors and now we will write full blog posts about those who have yet to be featured. Do you know of a great person to be a subject? Let us know!

Sybilla Righton Masters was an American inventor and the first resident of the U.S. Colonies to be given an English patent.

Masters invented a way to clean and cure Indian corn. The process allowed corn to be used for many more uses from eating to crafting cloth products and goods.

Little is known about her early life. But it is believed that she was born sometime in 1676 and emigrated from Bermuda to New Jersey in 1687, alongside her six sisters. Her parents appear in the colonial records in 1682. She married Thomas Master and moved to Philadelphia. He was a State Supreme Court Justice there and also served two terms as mayor.

She enjoyed cooking and preparing meals during this time. At the time, colonists ate a lot of ground-up Indian corn. They ground the corn between two stones which was quite time-consuming and challenging. After watching the Native American women prepare their corn, she was inspired. They ground their corn with wooden posts which was much more efficient. She expanded on that and invented a mill that used hammers to smash the corn into corn meal. She called it “Tuscarora Rice” but most of us know it today as southern-style grits.

In 1712, she left her family to go to London to pursue a patent for her invention ideas. Many American states were issuing patents but not Pennsylvania. Patents were a new idea at the time so the process took longer than she thought. She stayed in London for three years, opening a hat shop in the meantime. She was good with her hands and found a way to weave hats with straw and palmetto leaves. In 1715, patent 401 was issued for the corn grinding process and a year later patent 403 was issued for the hat process. Both were in her husband’s name, as women were not allowed to hold patents. However, her husband was never shy about the brains behind the inventions; he always gave her full credit. Patent 401 noted “a new invention found out by Sybilla, his wife.” This was the first issued by King George to a person of the American Colonies.

She returned home in 1716 to find Thomas had built a mill to produce Tuscarora Rice using her process. While people didn’t much care for the taste in England, it eventually became a staple in the southern American diet.