Tom Mather (1888 in Chorley, Lancashire - 1957), was a football player and manager.

Mather was assistant secretary of both Manchester City and Bolton Wanderers before taking the manager's job at Bolton at the beginning of the First World War, remaining at the club until 1915 when he was called up by the Royal Navy. He remained as manager, in name only, until July 1919, his duties being taken on, and then over, by his assistant Charles Foweraker. After his national service he moved to Southend United as manager.

Mather moved to Stoke City as manager and spent twelve years at Stoke winning the Third Division North title in 1927 and Second Division title in 1932. Mather is also notable as the man who gave Stanley Matthews his debut.

Mather left in 1935 to join Newcastle United as manager.

After World War 2 Mather managed Leicester City and Kilmarnock before returning to Stoke on Trent to work for a catering company.

Samuel Mather (1851 – 1931) was born in Cleveland, Ohio and for many years was that city's richest citizen and a major philanthropist, particularly favoring Kenyon College. In 1847 his father had founded the Cleveland Iron Mining Company, and Mather was destined to follow him in the management of this company. Following Mather's graduation from the St. Mark's School of Southborough, Massachusetts in 1869, he suffered a serious injury working in one of the company’s facilities. He spent the next two years in convalescence, and accordingly, never attended Harvard University as he had previously planned.

Following two years of travel and convalescence, Mather married Flora Stone in 1881; the couple's combined fortunes made them the richest family in Ohio. Two years later, Mather was a founding principal in the Pickands, Mather and Company. Pickands, Mather and Co. became one of the four major iron ore companies in the United States through the operation of extensive mines in the Lake Superior region. By providing ample access to iron ore, steel, and shipping, Mather became increasingly wealthy through the profits reaped by the company and through the inheritance left to him from his father.

Thomas Earl "Tom" Petty (born October 20, 1950) is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He is the frontman of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and was a founding member of the late 1980s supergroup Traveling Wilburys and Mudcrutch. He has also performed under the pseudonyms of Charlie T. Wilbury, Jr. and Muddy Wilbury.

He has recorded a number of hit singles with the Heartbreakers and as a solo artist, many of which remain heavily played on adult contemporary and classic rock radio. His music, and notably his hits, have become popular among younger generations as he continues to host sold-out shows. Throughout his career, Petty and his collaborators have sold 60 million albums.

Tom Petty was born and raised in Gainesville, Florida, and attended Gainesville High School. His interest in rock and roll music began at age 10 when he met Elvis Presley. In the summer of 1961, his uncle was working on the set of Presley's film Follow That Dream in nearby Ocala, Florida and invited Petty to come down and watch the shoot. He instantly became an Elvis Presley fan and soon traded his Wham-O slingshot for a box of Elvis 45s. In a 2006 interview on the National Public Radio program Fresh Air, Petty said that he knew he wanted to be in a band the moment he saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. One of his first guitar teachers was Don Felder, a fellow Gainesville resident, who would later join the Eagles. As a young man, Petty worked briefly on the grounds crew for the University of Florida, but never attended as a student. An Ogeechee lime tree that he planted while employed at the University is now called the Tom Petty tree.

Richard Mather (1596 - April 22, 1669), was a Puritan clergyman in colonial Boston, Massachusetts. He was father to Increase Mather and grandfather to Cotton Mather, both celebrated Boston divines.

Mather was born in Lowton, in the parish of Winwick, Lancashire, England, of a family which was in reduced circumstances but entitled to bear a coat-of-arms.

He studied at Winwick grammar school, of which he was appointed a master in his fifteenth year, and left it in 1612 to become master of a newly established school at Toxteth Park, Liverpool. After a few months at Brasenose College, Oxford, he began in November 1618 to preach at Toxteth, and was ordained there, possibly only as deacon, early in 1619.

In August-November 1633 he was suspended for nonconformity in matters of ceremony; and in 1634 was again suspended by the visitors of Richard Neile, archbishop of York, who, hearing that he had never worn a surplice during the fifteen years of his ministry, refused to reinstate him and said that "it had been better for him that he had begotten seven bastards."