After receiving preliminary education in her native place, she went with Miss Sarah H. Woolston, her sister and her life associate in home and work, to the Wesleyan Female College, at Wilmington, Delaware, where she was graduated with honor from both English and classical departments.
Their special work was to organize and superintend a boarding school for Chinese girls under the auspices of the China Female Missionary Society of Baltimore.
The sisters were sent out by the parent board, American Methodist Episcopal Mission, but their school was supported by the Ladies' China Missionary Society of Baltimore (founded in 1848).
[3] They overcome the natural prejudices of the people, emphasized by the wrongs done them by foreign traders, and the lack of books, maps, charts for a well-established school.
In addition to caring for the schools, the sisters provided many of the girls with clothing, teaching them to make their own, to cook, wash, and other details for the education of good housewives.