Sybilla Masters nee Righton lived in Philadelphia with a husband and children. One of the common foods of the time was hominy, a fine corn meal. The usual method used by colonial women for grinding the corn was to use two large millstones called millstones. This was arduous work.

Sybilla had observed some of the Native American women using large wooden posts to pound the corn. She invented a mill that used hammers to pound the corn into meal which she named “Tuscarora Rice.”

Sybilla also worked with straw and palmetto leaves that came from the West Indies. She created a way to weave these leaves into hats and bonnets.

Sybilla wanted to patent her two inventions. At that time, having a patent was a very new idea. Some colonies granted patents, but Pennsylvania did not. Also, a colonial patent was not as good as a patent from England, because England ruled the colonies. Sybilla decided to travel to England to get her patents. She left Philadelphia in 1712. It was a long sea journey. When she reached London she learned that there was no regular procedure for obtaining a patent. She finally applied to King George I.

It took three years for the first patent to be granted. While Sybilla waited, she opened a store in London that made and sold the bonnets and hats that were the subject of her second patent. She also made chair covers of straw and palmetto, using the same process.

In 1715 King George granted a patent for the process of “Cleaning and Curing the Indian Corn Growing in the severall Colonies in America.”  The application was made in her husband’s name as women's limited property rights did not allow them to hold a patent. King George granted Patent #401 to Thomas Masters for “a new invention found out by Sybilla, his wife.”

Source: http://www.cbsd.org/pennsylvaniapeople/level2_biographies/Level_2_biographies/sybilla_masters_level_2.htm