Martha Helen (née Whitaker) Haywood was born in North Carolina in 1811 to a prominent planter family. She is mentioned in her cousin, Margaret Eliza Cotten's, diary, which now resides in the North Carolina State Archives. She married physician Fabius Julius Haywood, known for being the first to use chloroform as an anesthetic in the state. Haywood died in Raleigh on July 22, 1902.