Born in East Windsor Hill, Connecticut on March 2, 1856, to Sarah (Bolles) and Reed Watson, she received a private education.
[2] She taught painting at a Martha's Vineyard summer school for twenty years in the last 19th century and exhibited in major east coast cities.
The work will be carried on in all favorable weather out of doors, and will consist of making sketches of the many attractive bits of sea and landscape which the Island has to offer.
A note in the book described "marginal sketches in color made by the artist as she read the successive chapters amid the scenes characterized by Thoreau.
Thus she saw the sand, the lighthouse, the ocean, the sails, the fishermen, the weather-beaten houses, and when Thoreau threw in a Floridian contrast she was able happily to jot down a note in color from her own Florida sketches.