Rachel Crane Mather

Beaufort County Library

Quick Facts

Significance:

Founder of Mather School, teacher 

Place of Birth:

Troy, New Hampshire

Date of Birth:

February 5, 1823

Place of Death:

Deep River, Connecticut

Date of Death:

February 11, 1903

Cemetery Name:

Fountain Hill Cemetery

Rachel Crane Mather was born in 1823 to a deeply religious family in New Hampshire. In 1846, she married a Baptist minister named Joseph Higgins Mather, Jr. and they had two children. Just six years later, in 1852, both her husband and one of her sons, Samuel died. Heartbroken, Mather looked for a way to heal her grief, and poured herself into education.

During Reconstruction, the American Missionary Association (AMA) began recruiting teachers to send South as missionaries to provide relief and support for formerly enslaved people, and Mather answered the call. She arrived in Beaufort, South Carolina in November of 1867, and soon realized that the Sea Islands needed more than a school. Mather wanted to provide a home for the many children left orphaned by the war. However, the AMA declined her proposal to build a children’s home, opting to focus on day schools. She then left the AMA and decided to start her own school, financially supported by Northern friends, associates, and even schools she had previously taught at.

In the fall of 1868, Rachel Mather opened her very own orphans’ home and school in Beaufort. Her mission for this school was to provide Black women and girls a quality education. The school sat on twenty acres of land, which Mather had purchased for eighty-seven dollars, and was located on a bluff overlooking the Beaufort River. With funds received by a northern school, Mather was able to purchase two unused Army barracks from Hilton Head Island, had them floated up the Beaufort River to the land she purchased. One of the barracks was turned into a schoolhouse and the other into dormitories. Before the barracks arrived, Mather taught her students from her own home, which would later be known as Mather Cottage. Mather’s student population increased significantly to the point where she had to hold classes on the front lawn. Short on supplies like proper textbooks, Mather utilized her Bible to teach her students grammar, reading, writing and religious instruction.

As the years went by, Rachel Mather received more students and hired more faculty. By the turn of the century, the school went through drastic changes as the school grew rapidly. More buildings were put in place to accommodate the increase in students, more faculty were brought on board, and more grades were added to the curriculum. Rachel Crane Mather died in 1903, and was buried in her home state of New Hampshire. 

Although Rachel Mather was gone from Beaufort, her legacy lived in through her school, called the Mather School. In the 1950s, the school added a Junior College, which transformed the Mather School from an all-female school to a school providing post-secondary education to male and female students. In 1968, Mather School celebrated its centennial, but that same year the school underwent yet another transformation – its closure.

The campus and its Junior College was incorporated into the Technical College of the Lowcountry, a network of technical colleges that operates throughout the region. In 2020, the Technical College of the Lowcountry renamed its Beaufort Campus – still located where Rachel Mather had placed her school – as “The Mather Campus of Technical of the Lowcountry.” Later that year, the site was added to the Reconstruction Era National Historic Network, and the school established a small museum, ensuring that future generations will know the work and legacy of Rachel Mather.