Emily Howells was born in Bristol, England, to a well-established British family who had immigrated to the United States in 1832. Her father Henry Howells was a Quaker and intended to join the American abolitionist movement. Emily's mother Mary Best Howells died when the girl was five, when they were still in England. Her widowed father married again before they left for the US. In the US, he moved his family to several American cities, where he founded schools to gain an income, before settling in Eaglewood, New Jersey. After his second wife died (women had a high mortality in childbirth), Howells married a third time; he fathered a total of 24 children. He opposed slavery and encouraged his children to "pray for the blacks and to pity the poor Indians". His compassion did not preclude his believing that his own race was superior to others.