Henry Martin Tupper (April 11, 1831 – November 12, 1893) was an American Baptist minister who founded Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina.

His paternal ancestry has been linked to a family of prominent Lutheran dissenters who left Germany and settled in England during the reign of Henry VIII.

In order to fund his continuing education, he took a job as a school teacher in New Jersey, where he was baptised in a nearby Baptist church.

Sarah's older brother Judson Wade Leonard, a successful businessman in woolen textiles, helped support Shaw University financially.

[4] After the Civil War, Tupper was commissioned by the Home Mission Society to act as a missionary to freed slaves in the American South.

Discharged from the Union Army on July 14, 1865, he and his wife Sarah departed for Raleigh, North Carolina, on October 1 to begin his work.

Traveling via train through Portsmouth, Virginia, they had delays due to extensive damage to the rail network caused by the Civil War; they arrived in Raleigh on October 10.

He procured food and clothing from the Freedman's Bureau to help support the many homeless black men in Raleigh.

[3][6][7] Having outgrown his temporary location at the Guion Hotel, Tupper purchased a plot of land, using $500 saved from his military service.

On the plot, located at the corner of Blount and Cabarrus streets in Raleigh, he constructed a two-story timber building to serve as both a school and church.

Nearby to the south was the estate of Paul Barringer, the patriarch of a prominent North Carolina political dynasty.

[9] Along with two students, Nicholas Franklin Roberts and Edward Hart Lipscomb, Tupper was an editor of the quarterly journal, African Expositor, founded in 1878.

[3] In 1870 the trustees of the local Second Baptist Church of Raleigh sued Tupper on charges of defrauding its members in relation to his fundraising for Shaw College.