 Jennie Maria Arms was born in 1852 in Bellows Falls, Vermont, to Eunice Stratton (Moody) Arms and George Albert Arms, who ran a hardware store.She attended high school in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and went on to study at Mrs. Badger's School in Boston (1873–76) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1877–79).She entered MIT the year that the Woman's Laboratory opened under the direction of chemist Ellen Swallow Richards.