Lilian Hunt Trasher was born in Jacksonville, Florida and was raised Roman Catholic in Brunswick, Georgia. According to one account, her Quaker family had moved to the South after the Civil War.
While still in her late teens, Trasher attended Bible college for one term, and then worked at Faith Orphanage in North Carolina in 1908-1910, after she failed to get a reporting job that she wanted.
Deciding that her mission lay in Africa, she broke off the engagement ten days before the wedding after her prospective husband failed to share her call.
Trasher also taught at a second Bible school in South Carolina, pastored a Pentecostal church, and briefly travelled with an evangelist, but later returned to work again at the orphanage.
In 1910 after meeting Pastor Brelsford (or Perlsford) of Assiout, Egypt at a missionary conference, Trasher decided to defy her family's wishes and leave for that country.[3] Inspired as well by opening a bible to Acts 7:34, which referred to Egypt, Lilian and her sister Jennie sailed to Africa with less than 100 dollars in their pockets.
By the time she died in 1961, the Lillian Trasher Orphanage had grown to some 1200 children. Today, the institution is entirely the responsibility of the Assemblies of God of Egypt.
"Mama" Lillian lies buried on her orphanage's cemetery.
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