Sophia B. Packard

In 1850 she graduated from the Charlestown Female Seminary, and after teaching for several years she became preceptor and a teacher at the New Salem Academy in 1855.

After successfully operating her own school in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, in partnership with her longtime companion, Harriet E. Giles, Packard taught at the Connecticut Literary Institution in Suffield (1859–64).

In 1877 she presided over the organizing meeting of the Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society, of which she was chosen treasurer that year and corresponding secretary the next.

In 1880 Packard toured the South and decided to open a school for African American women and girls in Georgia.

She continued in that post and as president of the school until her death, at which time Spelman Seminary had 464 students and a faculty of 34.