Her paternal grandparents Harvey Rexford Hitchcock (1800–1855) and Rebecca Howard (1808–1890) were American Protestant missionaries who settled in the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1832.

Her parents were David Howard Hitchcock (1831–1899), a lawyer and legislator in the legislature of the Hawaiian Kingdom, and Almeda Eliza Widger (1828–1895).

The decision was controversial since no women had been admitted to the bar before in the Kingdom but her father and King Kalākaua‘s Minister of Foreign Affairs Jonathan Austin recommended her.

[7][8] She assisted with office work and represented clients in local cases in Hilo while her father was off conducting his circuit in other parts of the island.

[7] On May 24, 1892, Hitchcock married American physician William Levi Moore whom she had met while he was studying medicine at the University of Michigan.