At the age of three, she taught herself to read and developed what became a lifelong enjoyment of reading aloud. Her father enrolled in Albany Medical School in 1861 and graduated in 1864, which created an added burden on her mother to manage the farm when her father was away. During that time she attended a rural district school. After his return, when she was six-years old, the family moved into a rented house in Windsor, New York and her father established a medical practice in the town. When she was ten, she began attending the co-educational Windsor Academy in her hometown.