Masters, Sybilla (died 1720)

US inventor and retailer. She travelled to London c. 1712 where she received two patents (both in her husband's name but credited to her). The first, from 1715, was for a device for ‘cleaning and curing the Indian corn’; the cornmeal was later sold in Philadelphia as ‘Tuscarora Rice’ and promoted as a cure for consumption, but it never caught on. The second patent, from 1716, was for ‘a new way of working and staining’ the straw and palmetto leaf used in making women's hats. She stayed briefly in London to sell her products but by May 1716 she had returned to Philadelphia and her patents were registered in Pennsylvania in 1717.

She was born Sybilla Righton probably in Bermuda, and was the daughter of a merchant seaman who, by c. 1690, had an estate on the Delaware River. She married Thomas Masters, a Quaker merchant and public official in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.