On June 25, 1840, in New York City, Tileston married Harvard graduate Edward Augustus Holyoke Hemenway (1803–1876), a multi-millionaire Boston sea merchant some seventeen years older than her.
[7] During the Civil War Hemenway helped to fund the Sanitary Commission, a private relief agency to aid sick and wounded soldiers.
[4] Following her husband's death in 1876, Hemenway donated $100,000 to help save the Old South Meeting House in Boston from destruction after a fire in 1872.
Renamed as the Hemenway Farm, this land provided food for black and indigenous students at Hampton, and agricultural training.
The property had a mansion house, guest cottage, large dairy barn, experimental gardens, and a wide range of livestock.
[14] [15] [16] Hemenway also helped finance (among others) Booker T. Washington, a graduate of Hampton who became a principal at the teacher training school Tuskegee Institute established in 1881.
[citation needed] In 1885, to help develop industrial skills for girls, Hemenway funded a two year training program for sewing and cooking classes in Boston.
[18] In 1886 the ethnologist Frank Hamilton Cushing travelled with Zuni Indians to Boston and met with Hemenway to petition her for support.
[19][20] [21] Hemenway funded studies of Zuni and Hopi language and song with the help of Thomas Edison who gave the expedition equipment to create recordings.
[23] In 1889 Hemenway and her assistant Amy Morris Homans organized and promoted a Conference on Physical Training in a hall at MIT.
Ultimately, through her efforts promoting the Swedish system of physical culture over 60,000 Boston school children took part in daily exercise.
[24] In 1889 Hemenway also established the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics (BNSG) under the appointed Director Amy Morris Homans.
[25] [26] Recently a bronze relief sculptural portrait by the artist Anne Whitney of Hemenway was found in the Wellesley Archives.