Shelbyville Female Academy

Shelbyville, Bedford Co.

Sarah Clay Martin Tillman (1811-1836) was the eldest child of John Tillman and Rachel Powell Martin. Her father was a prosperous farmer in Fairfield, Bedford County. Sarah may have been acquainted with Sarah Crawford, who made a sampler in Shelbyville in 1825 (TSS 206). In 1836 Sarah married Henry Cannon, a farmer. She gave birth to two children and died at the age of 25, six weeks after the birth of her second child.

Sarah made her sampler at the Shelbyville Female Academy, which was chartered in 1820. Shelbyville was approximately 12 miles from Fairfield. To cover this distance, Sarah may have ridden horseback to school every day or she could have boarded with a family in town. In 1832 the Shelbyville Female Academy advertised in the local paper the Western Freeman that “young ladies from the country can be accommodated with boarding in respectable families on reasonable terms.”