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Elizabeth Bender was a female student at Dickinson Preparatory School and Dickinson College who after graduating spent a year teaching at the Carlisle Indian School. Lizzie Bender and her twin brother Simon were born on June 13, 1865 in Bendersville, PA.  She was the daughter of a Methodist minister, Rev. Amos Bender and Elizabeth Sleicher Bender. Her Methodist up bringing would become an important part of Lizzie’s life. Before coming to the Dickinson College Preparatory School with her brother in 1884, Lizzie attended Chambersburg High School and Wilson College.  Lizzie was a very good student, earning the Patton Prize while in the Prep School.  Lizzie and her brother then entered the college. Lizzie was one of three girls in a class of twenty, however, she out shone many of her male peers. Lizzie became a member of Phi Beta Kappa on June 22nd, 1888.  Lizzie graduated in 1888, and started teaching at the Carlisle Indian School in August of that year. At the time of her graduation, and important aspect of a Dickinson education was missionary work. Lizzie would later embrace this job fully in Japan, and the Indian School served as a training grounds for this work. Lizzie spent two years teaching at the Carlisle Indian School before traveling to Japan where she would spend the next sixteen years as a missionary.  Lizzie would return periodically to the United States and Carlisle during these years to talk about her experiences. One such instance is noted in the October 32, 1986 issue of The Indian Helper: “Miss Lizzie Bender who after her graduation at Dickinson College was a member of our faculty and afterwards went to Japan as a Missionary, spoke in the Methodist Church in town on last Tuesday evening, and a number from the school went in to hear her. She has an exceedingly attractive manner as a speaker and her address was fraught with instruction and interest.”  Lizzie returned permanently to the United States in 1906. She continued to do missionary work, serving as secretary of the Women’s Foregin Missionary Society of the Methodist Church for the next twenty-five years. As Lizzie aged, her health declined, and she was ill for many years. She died in her sister’s home in Laurel, Md on May 13, 1942.