Teichert's mother was an educated woman, who attended the Sacred Heart Academy in Ogden, Utah, instructed in language, arts, and music. She was of English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, French, Belgian, Spanish and German ancestry. Teichert's father had come from a wealthy German-immigrant Jewish family in Boston, Massachusetts. He moved West as a young man in 1878. He hunted bison and bear, and worked on ranches near Buffalo, Wyoming and in the Powder River area. He drifted into Utah through Brown's Hole and the Uintah Basin, finally making it to the mining town of Stockton, Utah, southwest of the Salt Lake Valley. He was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in 1886. Fred and Mary married in 1887, and moved to Pocatello, Idaho a few years later. Fred had suffered an eye injury while working in the railroad yards which required the family to move frequently to various rural communities where they would open and run small shops. Due to the lack of schools in the area, Teichert and her siblings were frequently homeschooled, therefore Teichert did not receive a formal primary education.