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This photo of Nancy C. Martin was taken in Georgia before she and her husband Archie moved to Ames in 1915. She became one of a handful of prominent black citizens of the town. (See article "Early African-American Families of Ames" in the Winter 1990-91 issue of "The Ames Intelligencer" (newsletter of the Ames Heritage Association).) Nancy Martin was born on May 22,1855, in Newman, Georgia. She married Archie A. Martin in 1886 in Austell, Georgia. She was the mother of thirteen children (four children were from a previous marriage: Ernest, Richard, Luther, and Hattie). The Martins built a house at 218 Lincoln Way in 1919 which became not only a family home, but a home-away-from-home for many African American students at Iowa State College. The second floor bedrooms were rented to students who were denied housing accomodations on the ISC campus. Nancy Martin died on May 17, 1947, at the age of 91, five days short of her 92nd birthday. She was survived by her husband, four sons (Ernest Simmons, Archie Martin Jr., Paul Martin, and Robert Martin), three daughters (Hattie Simmons Miller, Nellie Martin Shipp, and Julia Martin Brown), thirty-one grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.