Mother Solomon

Margaret Grey Eyes Solomon (November 1816 – August 18, 1890), better known as Mother Solomon, was a Wyandot nanny. She was born along Owl Creek, Ohio, and her father took her to Indigenous sites as a child. After moving to the Big Spring Reservation in 1822, she learned housekeeping and English at a mission school. At age eight, Solomon began attending the Wyandot Mission Church. She remained at the school as a young woman and married a classmate in 1833. Two of their children were buried by the church. In 1842, her community succumbed to the Indian Removal Act and signed a treaty to move to Kansas. Dozens died of illness along the journey, and in Kansas, Solomon sought to protect the Huron Indian Cemetery, as by 1860, she had buried within it her husband and six remaining children. In Kansas, oxen, pigs, and horses were stolen from her.

Margaret became homesick after marrying the sheriff John Solomon. In 1865, alongside her nephew, they relocated to her prior home in Ohio. When John died in 1876, Margaret began babysitting children. She garnered the nickname "Mother Solomon", and many residents later attested to being raised by her. Throughout the village, Solomon promoted Wyandot culture and advocated for the run-down mission church to be restored. During its rededication in 1889, she sang "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". Many attendees admired her stage presence. Solomon became weaker in her final years and died in 1890. Her popularity has been analyzed, and the Wyandot County Museum has since displayed her belongings.

Early life, education, and family
Margaret Grey Eyes Solomon was born in November 1816 along Owl Creek in Marion County, Ohio. She was the oldest of at least four siblings and two half-siblings. Her father was the Wyandot chief John "Squire" Grey Eyes, and her mother was named Eliza. Following tradition, Eliza pierced Solomon's ears a few days after birth and inserted chicken feathers to maintain the holes. She anticipated that Solomon would wear jewelry. Solomon only received her given name, one of Christian origin, during the Green Corn Feast held in August 1817. At age four, she and Squire traveled 50 miles by horse to Hancock County. During their hunting trip there, they camped at Fort Findlay in a blockhouse built for President William Henry Harrison. That year, Squire also accompanied Solomon to the Olentangy Indian Caverns. She was too afraid to explore them, but found importance in visiting such sites where her ancestors had held meetings or hid from enemies.

Solomon and her family worked as hunters and traders along village footpaths. They moved to a small cabin on the Big Spring Reservation in 1822. Here, Solomon recited traditional Wyandot language teachings to her dolls and began playing make-believe with them. Eliza taught her horticulture in their garden, especially weeding, and Solomon's uncle, chief Warpole, often visited their home to tell stories. Solomon sat with her siblings one day and heard him recount their origins as the Petun, a Canadian people known for growing tobacco. He then spoke of customs like the war dance, the Green Corn Feast, and lacrosse.



Methodist missionaries were prominent in the reserve and converted many Wyandots; Squire was among a group of chiefs that requested the Methodist Episcopal Church to build a mission school in neighboring Upper Sandusky. Upon its opening in 1821, Solomon was one of the first students to be enrolled. She became a student of Harriet Stubbs, who taught her hymns, and a friend of John Stewart, who taught her to read and write English. Alongside the other schoolgirls, she learned to cook, sew, assemble fibers for knitting, and housekeep. Arithmetic challenged her the most.

Missionaries often visited Squire at home, and Solomon enjoyed preaching and singing with them. She began attending the nearby Wyandot Mission Church at age eight and eventually befriended each of its pastors. As a young woman, Solomon remained at the school to help its children, and David Young, a Wyandot friend and classmate, invited her on a canoe ride along the Sandusky River. She received Eliza's permission to go on the date and, afterward, began spending more time with Young. On February 4, 1833, the couple were married in the church by the priest Thomas Simms. They moved into a log cabin Young had built over the river.

Wyandot removal to Kansas
President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act, calling for Indigenous communities to move west of the Mississippi River, passed in 1830. Treaty commissioners in the region, spurred on by the federal government, began pressuring them to leave, and nearby Lenapes and Shawnees signed their own removal treaties. However, Wyandot scouting parties out west in 1831 and 1834 rejected their proposed land tracts. Tensions peaked in the fall of 1841 when two white men murdered the head chief Summundewat, rendering Solomon uncertain as to her community's future. Squire was against removing and only conceded when a Wyandot council voted two-thirds in favor. After securing 25,000 acres within Kansas City, Kansas, the Wyandots signed a removal treaty in March 1842.

On July 12, 1843, hundreds gathered at the Wyandot Mission Church, Solomon included. They grieved, spread flowers across the adjacent graveyard, and heard Squire give a farewell speech in the Wyandot language. Solomon hugged Mrs. Parker, a white neighbor, and David Young shook hands with his white friends. They had two children of their own buried in the cemetery, but they remained with a son and two daughters. Their youngest daughter rode in a cradleboard upon Solomon's back. Around 664 Wyandots arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio, after a week of travel by wagon, horse, and foot. They were harassed by whiskey traders before boarding two steamships, and in Kansas, land disputes forced many to camp in flooded lowlands. Blinding eye inflammation, measles, and severe diarrhea were widespread, and 18% of the removed Wyandots had died by 1844.

In Kansas, Young began work as a ferryman while Solomon tried to recuperate with her family. In the spring, she began an apple tree orchard and a garden. Solomon had a few more children, totaling three boys and five girls, but alongside the remaining ones, these died in infancy. Upon the death of her two-year-old son in 1848 and another son to fever a year later, she had only three living daughters by 1851. That year, Young contracted fatal tuberculosis, and in 1852, another daughter died. By the end of the decade, Solomon had buried her entire family in the Huron Indian Cemetery, which had replaced the mission school and church as a Wyandot fixture. Her community's legal status was threatened by forced enfranchisement, so she continuously tried to show that the graveyard was important. Even after returning to Ohio, the year she died, Solomon signed a document objecting to the removal of the cemetery's remains.



A gray horse, bay horse, and brown mare, worth $195 combined, were stolen from Solomon in September 1848, which she attributed to Oregon emigrants. Further thefts occurred that fall to 30 of her pigs, worth $90 in total. A friend of hers, Catherine Johnson, corroborated that possessions totaling $580, including oxen and horses, were stolen from her between 1855 and 1859. In one case, a housekeeper named James Cook reportedly fled after taking $225 worth of gold coins from a trunk owned by her brother. However, in 1860, Margaret became livelier when she married the Wyandot sheriff John Solomon. He was similarly a widower.

Return to Ohio
Margaret was struck by homesickness after marrying John. She convinced John and her nephew, Jimmy Guyami, to return to Ohio with her. In October 1862, her and John's two-acre land tract on the south end of Tauromee Street was put up for auction, and in 1865, the three traveled to Upper Sandusky. New shops, hotels, and a large courthouse now stood downtown. However, they settled along the Big Spring Reservation in the small cabin David Young had built. Much of the original village had deteriorated. The community council house burned down in 1851, and the roof and walls of the mission church had begun to collapse. Even so, a few former houses remained among the now-2,500 residents. Upon arrival, Margaret reunited with Mrs. Parker, who still lived in a brick home with her family. Margaret and John began attending church services at the Belle Vernon schoolhouse, and they followed the church when it moved into its own building. John also took up a job as a tailor. The Parker Covered Bridge was built beside the Parkers in 1873, which Margaret and John often walked across during their shopping trips to Upper Sandusky.

John died on December 14, 1876, widowing Margaret a second time. Now 60, she found pleasure in babysitting the neighborhood children, and she often sought after struggling families. She also became a surrogate mother. The historian Kathryn Magee Labelle described her childcare as "tireless [and] daily", and the village nicknamed her "Mother Solomon" out of respect. Many residents later attested to being raised by her, even into the 1950s, and some deemed it an honor. Solomon promoted Wyandot culture throughout the village and demonstrated the Wyandot language during community gatherings and public presentations. To teach children about the relationship between Wyandots and their ancestors, she repeated the stories of her elders. The Hocking Sentinel described her storytelling as "full of interest and romance". They thought she spoke wisely about the genealogy of her ancestors, who, as she described, lived near Lake Huron, were termed "Petun" by the French for their harvesting of tobacco, and were devastated by Iroquois attacks. In 1881, Solomon took a train to and from Kansas to visit her relatives, who had sent many invitations. Guyami looked after her chickens and cows while she was away. In 1883, she gave away paintings of the prominent chiefs Mononcue and Between-the-Logs, permitting them to be reproduced.



Solomon implored the village to restore and continue operating the run-down mission church. She argued that this would preserve part of the historical record of Wyandots in Ohio. In 1888, having set aside a $2,000 budget, the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church began repairs. Upon completion, on September 21, 1889, the Central Ohio Conference held a rededication ceremony. There were an estimated 3,000 attendees that afternoon, Guyami included. William H. Gibson was among the ministers who gave speeches, and Elnathan C. Gavitt, the only former missionary in attendance, spoke fondly about his time there. Likewise, Solomon was the only Wyandot who had departed in 1843 to be present. At the age of 72, she sang a Wyandot translation of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing", a hymn she had learned there. The Urbana Daily Citizen J. W. Henley called her an "object of great interest". The Western Christian Advocate agreed with this sentiment and described her as "strong and well preserved". Many attendees found beauty in her native language, and The Bryan-College Station Eagle thought she sang in a "sweet, clear voice". As the participants of the service circulated and shook hands, the Western Christian Advocate concluded: "Mother Solomon, and many others, became very happy, and rejoiced, and shouted the praises of God."

In her final years, Solomon sensed she was weakening. When the Sandusky River flooded her cabin, a townsman named Joseph Parker would row over and retrieve her from the upstairs window. N. B. C. Love, an organizer of the mission church's rededication, reported in 1889: "Native to this soil, she expects before many years to lie down in it, as in the arms of a loving mother, while with the Christian's hope she sings of 'The Land That Is Fairer than Day,' where she expects to meet the loved ones of her people." By July 1890, she agreed to move into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Hayman.

Death and legacy
Solomon died on August 18, 1890. Her funeral was held at the Wyandot Mission Church two days later. Despite a downpour that morning, a large crowd gathered with people from across the county. The service was led by the pastor G. Lease, who called her a noble woman. Solomon was buried next to her husband David Young in the fenced cemetery behind the church. Her death was widely reported in local newspapers, which emphasized her father as a noted chief, her removal to Kansas and return to Ohio, and her work as a nanny. The historian Kathryn Magee Labelle referred to this coverage as a "momentary acknowledgement of [Wyandot] resilience in Ohio". However, many stories mistakenly called Solomon "the last of the Wyandots", which she attributed to the prominent Vanishing Indian stereotype and an attempt at erasing Wyandots from Ohio. Solomon has since been deemed a popular Ohian figure. According to the archivist Thelma R. Marsh, she was "almost a legend" when she died. Labelle wrote that her attainment of the honorific "Mother", as opposed to the lesser "Sister" or "Auntie", indicated success in her work. She ascribed Solomon to a Midwestern, 19th-century wave of mothers who sought to mediate between settler and Indigenous groups.

In February 1931, a century-old chair built by Solomon, with a woven shagbark hickory seat and no nails, was displayed at the Wyandot County Museum. They dedicated a glass case to her in May 1971 with her glasses, smoking pipe, beaded purse, candle molds, woven basket, and portrait. An exception to Solomon's limited bibliography is Marsh's 1984 children's book Daughter of Grey Eyes: The Story of Mother Solomon. It spans 60 pages and draws from archival material, journal articles, and family interviews. On the morning of August 12, 1990, Marsh led a service at the mission church commemorating the centennial of Solomon's funeral. She died and was buried there two years later. In October 2016, the church held an event celebrating the bicentennial of missionaries coming to Ohio. Solomon's life was recounted during a tour of the cemetery with 192 attendees. After the McCutchen Overland Inn Museum received her saddle from the Wyandot County Museum, they displayed it in the Anderson General Store in May 2021.