Hailing from Vermont, she traveled extensively around the world and lived in many cities in the United States before settling, like her brother Senator Richard Pettigrew, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where she died.

Andrew Pettigrew was a man of strong convictions, religious, and trained his family according to the moral code common to the New England Christian faith.

He was an abolitionist and a distributor of emancipation literature, and a link in the Underground Railroad to assist runaway slaves from the south on their way to Canada.

For his outspoken views in opposition to slavery, and his approval of William Lloyd Garrison of Boston, many people boycotted his business and refused to trade in his store, and often threatened him with violence.

In 1863, when the first slaves came north as a result of the Civil War, he gave these African Americans the preference and employed them upon the farm.

and the Anti-Saloon League, as well as being a member of a missionary society and literary club connected with the Calvary Baptist Church.