[1] She spent her childhood on the family farm with her mother and her older brother, Henderson Lee Turpin (1861–1957).
[2] She began writing at an early age and, during her fifteenth year, her first short story was accepted for publication.
She lived and worked for many years at Mountain Lake Biological Station writing and contributing to the scientific and artist community there.
She died on June 8, 1952, and was buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.
In addition to her own writing, she also edited and selected a number of collections which included, amongst others, a collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales for primary reader grades in the English language[3] and "The Gold-Bug and Other Selections from the Works of Edgar Allan Poe.