While she was a child, her owner Robert Stockton gave her to his daughter upon her marriage to Reverend Ashbel Green, president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University).

[2] She attended evening classes at Princeton and was studying at the university during the winter of 1815 when a revival broke out on campus; at this time she was granted her manumission by the Greens.

She remained as a paid domestic servant with the family, and learned to read, perhaps with some instruction from Reverend Green's sons.

Betsey Stockton learned of plans by Charles S. Stewart, a student at Princeton Theological Seminary and friend of the Green family, to go to Hawaii (then known as the Sandwich Islands) as a missionary.

She expressed a desire to go with him and his family, and Dr. Green and her Sabbath school teacher wrote letters of recommendation to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

The team (which included William Richards) set sail on the ship ‘’The Thames’’ from New Haven, Connecticut on November 22, 1822, for a five-month voyage.