In 1866, the family removed to Evanston, Illinois, where her father had built one of the earliest kindergartens in America where his children might "be trained".

After they moved to Brooklyn, New York, in 1870, Seelye attended Packer Collegiate Institute, but with her parents dissatisfied, she and her sister were soon taught at home by private teachers.

She also was the only child to attend adult classes in French and German at the Brooklyn Mercantile Library.

The Rockwell Centre for American Visual Studies cites this as a surprisingly early illustration of a girl reading.

The subject of girls reading in the illustration by Rosina Emmet Sherwood is thought rare (like the ones in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women).

Her study of the literature of the Middle English period enabled her to supply the editor of the Century Dictionary with 500 new words and definitions.