Back in the US, Betsey started several more schools for disadvantaged children and eventually settled in the town of Princeton where she helped to found both a church and the town’s only school for black children. As a child and young adult, she, too, heard Bible stories and adventures of missionaries in Africa from her owner and determined to one day to go to Africa to tell people about God herself. She founded a home for girls that housed forty orphans and a school where Maria taught girls real-life skills and the stories of Jesus.