Sarah J. Smith Tompkins Garnet (b. July 31, 1831, Queens, NY-d. Sept. 17, 1911, Brooklyn, NY) was the oldest daughter of farmer parents Sylvanus and Anne (Springsteel) Smith, oldest of eleven children. Her sister, Susan McKinney Steward, was the first African-American woman in New York State to earn a medical degree. Sarah married Rev. Samuel Tompkins who died i the 1860s. She later married Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, a Presbyterian minister and abolitionist, and was widowed in 1882.
After starting as a teacher, Sarah became the first African-American woman to be appointed as a principal in the New York City public school system. She retired from active school service in 1900. As a suffragist, she was the founder of the Brooklyn suffrage organization, Equal Suffrage League in the late 1880s. She was the superintendent of suffrage for the National Association of Colored Women.
