She was raised at Stensjö manor. Ulrika later stated she had always enjoyed the tasks usually given to men, that she had hardly learned any of the tasks normally performed by females at all. She said that people who had seen her hunt and ride had told her that it was a shame that she was not a man, so her talents would have "been put to better use in the world". After the death of her heavily indebted father in 1711, she and her five sisters were left without money, and the family estate was mortgaged. They relied on the charity of relatives and entered into arranged marriages with people whom they considered to be below their standards in order to support themselves: within four years of her father's death, all her sisters were married. Ulrika, who had watched her sisters enter unpleasant marriages, did not wish to marry, and in March 1713, she dressed herself in her father's clothes, stole a horse from the stable and ran away from home. Reportedly she "escaped a proposed marriage which was for her unpleasant".