Maria Louisa Bustill Robeson (November 8, 1853 – January 20, 1904) was an American Quaker schoolteacher; the wife of the Reverend William Drew Robeson of Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in Princeton, New Jersey and the mother of Paul Robeson and his siblings. Lenni-Lenape Native American, and Anglo-American descent. Her parents were Charles Hicks Bustill and Emily Robinson, prominent black Quakers.
In the 1870s, Louisa attended Lincoln University, a historically black university in Oxford, Pennsylvania. She was already a teacher when she met William Drew Robeson.
Louisa Bustill met William Drew Robeson I (1845–1918) when he was a student at Lincoln University. She was already teaching at the Robert Vaux School for black children. They had seven children together; two died in infancy and five lived to adulthood.
Louisa taught school and worked as a tutor while her husband was the Presbyterian minister of the Witherspoon Church in Princeton, New Jersey. The city had a relatively large black community, about 18% by the turn of the 20th century. It included both families who had long been free, like Louisa's, and others who had been born in slavery. The town had many Southern ties, and residential segregation was enforced.
Both the Robesons emphasized education and advancement for their children. Their first daughter, Gertrude Lascet Robeson (1880-1880), died as an infant. It was an upwardly mobile family;