Martha Munro Ferguson was the first child born to Robert and Isabella Selmes Ferguson. She entered the world on September 4, 1906, in her great-Aunt Sally’s house in Locust Valley on Long Island. A year and a half later, her brother, Bobby (or Buzz), joined her and the two of them were almost inseparable as they were growing up. In 1908, Martha’s father was diagnosed with tuberculosis, so her mother and father spent two years in the Adirondacks hoping to get him some relief. The children were put under the care of their grandmother, Patty Selmes, their nanny, Julia Farley Loving, and Sally and Frank Cutcheon. Although Isabella was able to visit them occasionally, she spent most of her time taking care of Robert. When the doctors suggested the family move out west for the dry air, Isabella was finally able to re-unite her family.

In the fall of 1910, Martha moved with her family to Cat Canyon, near Silver City, New Mexico. There she and her brother lived in tents with Julia Loving and were given school lessons by their mother and grandmother. Several years later the family moved to a permanent site where they built a large home on the side of a mountain with a pool in the back, called the Burro Mountain Homestead. Martha’s initials are still embedded in the rocks of one of the giant fireplaces in the colossal main room. She and her brother took care of their many animals, collected wood, and performed many other tasks on the ranch, but they always had time for fun, too. The ten-year-old Martha wrote her mother about their doings one year, “Bobby and I killed two chickens and I cut their heads off painlessly and without getting much blood on myself.”¹ She learned to ride a horse at a young age and took long walks with her brother, “tearing over the hills and having a fine time. We sometimes run a good way on all fours....”²

Martha, or Marty, as the family sometimes called her, or even Marshkins, as her father called her, did not enter a school building for classes until the fall of 1920, when she was fourteen years old. Her mother had a house built in Santa Barbara, California so Martha could attend a day school there. Bobby went to a boarding school nearby and Robert visited them for months at a time. The young girl was very sociable and made many friends during her years of school. Unfortunately, like her mother, she did not enjoy the academic aspect of school very much. Her father, who had been ill for as long as she could remember, died in 1922. She was so heartbroken that when she returned to Santa Barbara for school after his burial in Boone County, she moved in next door with her grandmother, refusing to face the memory of her father in the family’s house.³ Martha and her brother inherited the Burro Mountain Homestead.

In 1924, following her graduation from high school, Martha told her mother that she wanted to attend college, something few females of Isabella’s generation had done. Isabella encouraged her but Martha did not do very well on her entrance exam to Bryn Mawr. The school allowed her to enroll, but she had to study up on physics before entering in the fall. She only stayed in college for a year and a half. When her stepfather, John Greenway died early in 1926, she left school for good and returned to Arizona with her mother and her father’s remains.

Martha spent the next years traveling in Europe and visiting in Santa Barbara, New Mexico, and New York City. Her great-uncle, Frank Cutcheon, was able to see her quite often in the years before she married and apparently found her a little too independent for his liking. In 1926 he disclosed his anxieties to Isabella,

in spite of her sweet & affectionate disposition, Martha is astonishingly – almost unnaturally – wrongheaded in her indiscretions. She seems avid of acquiring a knowledge of what she calls ‘life’, and to have a dangerous confidence in her own knowledge, judgment, & self-control I ascribe much of this to the thyroid derangement....⁴

He was much more pleased several years later when Martha told him she “tried being a flapper but it was a complete failure and she had given it up.”⁵ It seems that Frank was not used to self-confident women which is exactly what Martha’s childhood encouraged.

At the age of twenty-six, Martha met Charles Breasted, a freelance writer whose father, James Breasted, a renowned Egyptologist, had been present for the opening of King Tut’s tomb. Charles had already been married and divorced but Martha accepted his marriage proposal.6 The wedding was held at the Burro Mountain Homestead on June 28, 1933, with the bride dressed in a bright yellow checked gingham dress. A western barbeque followed the ceremony and the couple traveled to Kentucky as part of their wedding trip. Several months later, her brother, Bob, married Martha’s friend, Frances Hand.

Beginning in January of 1935 with the birth of her son, David, Martha went on to have three more children: Macomb (1939), Isabella (1941), and Sarah (1946). She and her husband lived in the Cutcheon house on Long Island, but also spent time in Santa Barbara and Tucson, where Martha’s mother was managing the Arizona Inn. Before Isabella Greenway King died, she had a spacious home built next door to the Inn for Martha, so her daughter could stay there whenever she wanted. Martha and Charles and their family were able to enjoy the home in Arizona for several decades before the couple was divorced in the sixties.

In 1954, with the death of their mother, Martha, Bob, and Jack inherited the old Dinsmore property in Kentucky. When a 1968 sale fell through, Martha visited the farm and her childhood memories of the place encouraged her to try to preserve the house and the artifacts, which gave her the feeling of being in touch with her ancestors . Her brothers, on the other hand, were hoping to sell the property because it was not at all profitable. Isabella Greenway King’s accomplishments may have dwarfed those of earlier generations, but Martha recognized that the farm in Kentucky, with the furniture just how her great-Aunt Julia had left it when she died in 1926, held the roots of her family and she treasured the place because of this. She began making annual visits to the farm and familiarized herself with her neighbors. In exploring the house, she came upon aged trunks in the attic filled with family letters, pictures, journals, and business accounts, dating to the 1700s. They had all been carefully tied together with ribbon by Julia Dinsmore. Poring through these bits of family history, Martha was communing with her ancestors and felt that there was much more to the farm than making money.

Since none of her own children were interested in the property, she decided that she wanted to transform it into a museum where people could walk through a house that had no replicas. She wanted people to feel as though the owners of the house had just stepped out to go visiting and would be returning shortly. Although Bob and Jack supported her plans, the local universities were not willing to purchase the property, so Martha was almost forced to give up her dream. But in the mid-1980s, a group of local Boone County citizens got together and raised enough money to allow Martha to pay her half-brother, Jack Greenway, for his portion of the inheritance (her brother, Bob, had died in 1984). In 1987, Martha sold the house to the Dinsmore Homestead Foundation, and they began giving tours and conducting field trips for local schoolchildren a year later. She continued to visit the house – and put in her two cents during the tours – until her death on New Year’s Eve of 1994. Her family adhered to her request to have her body cremated and the ashes placed in the grave of Julia Farley Loving in the family graveyard on the hill.

¹ Martha Ferguson to Isabella Ferguson, 18 February 1916.
² Martha Ferguson to Isabella Ferguson, n.d.
³ Kristie Miller, Isabella Greenway: An Enterprising Woman (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2004), 111.
⁴ Frank Cutcheon to Isabella F. Greenway, 18 May 1926.
⁵ Frank Cutcheon to Isabella F. Greenway, 6 August 1929.
⁶ Kristie Miller, 191.