Lena B. Mathes (née, Mays; 1861–1951) was an American educator, social reformer, and ordained Baptist minister.

Her principal work, however, was organizing church women for intelligent, informed citizenship and for the purpose of arousing them to their duty at the polls.

She was graduated at Salem Academy (Winston-Salem, North Carolina) and later studied for a number of years in the University of Chicago receiving the degrees Ph.

[7] After rumors started spreading regarding possible inappropriate behavior between Mathes and John Forbes, the married president of Stetson University, multiple lawsuits for libel were filed.

[8] By 1905, she had left Stetson University and was selected to start teaching at Turkey Creek School in Hillsborough County, Florida.

But the children of the school asked the courts for an injunction to restrain her from teaching them, charging drunknenness and other acts of immorality on the part of Mathes.

Rarely, if ever in the U.S., and never before in Florida had a teacher been removed from her position by the summary legal process of an injunction restraining her from exercising her duties and powers, the most remarkable part of it being that the suit was brought in the name of the pupils who had been deprived of an education by their parents refusing to send them to a school taught by Mathes.

[9] At the age of twenty, she joined the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and thereafter devoted a considerable portion of her time to the organization of local branches and Legions of Honor.

She held membership in the following organizations: Anti-Saloon League of Illinois (Superintendent of Women's department of Illinois); Chicago Church Federation (Member of the board of trustees; Vice Chair of its commissions on World Friendship and Political Action); United Daughters of the Confederacy; WCTU; Women's Trade Union League; Woman's City Club; Chicago College Club; American Association of University Women; Chicago Woman's Club and American Sociological Society.