Her father,Stewart Hartshorn, a protagonist entrepreneur , established himself by acquiring land in the Short Hills region, thus earning recognition as the community's founder.
Witnessing the emotional anguish her mother endured due to these losses, Hartshorn became driven to contribute to the field of birth control.
Hartshorn was educated at home until 1887, when she and her family moved to England for a year, then to Paris, where she attended Madame Yearman's School.
"I had known the devastating effect in families of the lack of contraceptive knowledge and was shocked that our civilized country could imprison people for trying to help these poor women.
Subsequently, a statewide committee formed, called the New Jersey Birth Control League, and it opened the Newark Maternal Health Care Center in 1928.
She also had a substantial collection of early modern American paintings, some of which can be found today at the Newark Museum, including works of Marsden Hartley and Georgia O'Keeffe.