Born in
Portage County, Wisconsin on March 1, 1863 in a
log cabin, she was the daughter of William Dopp, one of the first white settlers in what at the time was a wilderness area. She descended from a long line of New York Cityers, scattered also across
Connecticut and upstate New York as well as the Midwest, and who displayed a marked taste for education over the generations. There was one
Homer Dopp who served for in the
Wisconsin State Assembly for one term in 1923 after a teaching career. A
New England cousin, Raymond Douglas Dopp, was a major name in Connecticut education in the later decades of the 20th century. According to the web site of Dopp family, he was also one of the close aides of General
James M. Gavin during the
Second World War and was one of the first American officers to access the
concentration camp in
Buchenwald. Her parents, together with several of her uncles, had left their farms in
New England to move to
Midwest and to settle on the rich plains in the
Indian Territory. She grew up in the area known then as "
Dopp Neighborhood" and attended the one room "Dopp School" in what is now in the town of
Belmont, in Portage County, surrounded by a large family and the experience of her early years in a farm near the wilderness was to mark her for her life. ==Teacher and writer==