Ayer, Elizabeth Taylor, 1803-1898

Elizabeth Taylor Ayer was born in Massachusetts in 1803. FRederick Ayer was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts that same year. Elizabeth went to Mackinac, Michigan in 1828 as a missionary teacher among Ojibwe Indians. She was there married to missionary Frederick Ayer in 1831 and the two traveled in 1832 to Sandy Lake, Minnesota, where they opened a school for the Ojibwe, the first such school opened in what later became Minnesota. They went on to open another such school at Pokegama, Minnesota, in 1836, and another in the 1840s in Belle Prairie. Frederick was later ordained a Presbyterian minister and worked in the Minnesota Chippewa Agency, 1861-1865, following which they moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where they worked as teaching missionaries to African American freedmen. Frederick died in Atlanta in 1867, whereupon Elizabeth returned to Minnesota and lived with her son in Belle Prairie until her death in 1898.

From the guide to the Elizabeth T. Ayer papers, 1868-1892., (Minnesota Historical Society)