John Sella Martin (September 27, 1832 – August 11, 1876) escaped slavery in Alabama and became an influential abolitionist and pastor in Boston, Massachusetts.

They resided together in one of the principal hotels in Columbus, and Martin was given the opportunity to learn how to read and write, as well as be exposed to a more worldly view (as opposed to being an agricultural worker).

In 1859 he gave an eloquent speech lifting up John Brown as a martyr like Jesus Christ and a warrior for freedom whose fight he compared to battles fought during the American Revolution.

[4] He entered the ministry and became minister of the First Independent Baptist Church (1860–1862) in the Beacon Hill section of that city.

[3] After the American Civil War, Martin returned to the South, working in education in Alabama and Mississippi.

In 1872 he was elected to the state legislature as a fusion candidate from Caddo Parish, Louisiana under Governor-elect John McEnery.

[7] In that year, the gubernatorial election was so fiercely disputed that the federal government had to get involved, deciding in favor of the Republican candidate, William Pitt Kellogg.

[9] They had two children: a son, Horace, who died at the age of four months in April 1861,[10] and a daughter, Josephine Sarah, born in Boston, March 9, 1863.

In 1884, both Sarah and her daughter Josie were witnesses at the wedding of Frederick Douglass and his second wife Helen Pitts Douglass[12] Josie, who had also worked in the District as a teacher, on December 27, 1883, married barber Cyrus Fabius Martin (no relation), a Civil War veteran from Dowagiac, Michigan.

Josephine Sarah Martin divorced her husband in 1909, and with her youngest daughter moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she married Dr. Graham Sharp, a chiropodist.