Mary Fletcher Wells, a philanthropist and educator born in Villenova, New York, came to Athens, Alabama, at the end of the Civil War. Declaring she came "With a Bible in one hand and a speller in the other," after serving as a nurse for the Union Army, divine inspiration led her to provide spiritual and intellectual nurturing for formerly enslaved people and their children in Limestone County. She established Trinity School in 1865 and Trinity Congregational Church in 1871. Co-sponsored by the American Missionary Association, she also served as a tour matron for the famed Fisk Jubilee Singers. Her bravery blazed a pathway for generations of civic and spiritual leaders, craftsmen, entrepreneurs, lawyers, poets, scholars, teachers, and other professionals with roots in these institutions.