Rachel Crane Mather (1823-1903) was born in Troy, New Hampshire, and died in Deep River, Connecticut. She was married to Joseph Higgins Mather (1820-1852), a Baptist minister educated at Brown University and Newton Theological Seminary. She lived in various places throughout New England until 1867, when she accepted an assignment from the American Missionary Society and moved to South Carolina. As part of her missionary work, she founded The Mather School in Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1868 to educate the daughters of freed slaves. This school remained in operation until 1968.

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