In the last capacity, she donated a collection of 215 specimens gathered in Nevada to Northwestern University, including the first subsequently named Searls' prairie clover.

[1] She received her early schooling in the town, then attended the Northwest Female College in Evanston, Illinois, leaving with a Laureate in Science in 1870.

At the time, it was difficult for women to gain internships due to gender discrimination, so instead she worked as a student nurse at Bellevue Hospital, New York.

[4] He subsequently became successively professor of physiology, hygiene and ophthalmology, and ontology at her alma mater, Northwestern University.

[5] They lived in Chicago, while retaining homes in Waukegan and Santa Barbara, and had two children, Harry born in 1883 and Roy in 1892.

[4] In 1871, Searls accompanied her father to the Pahranagat Valley, Nevada, where she collected various rocks, fossils, quartzite with fragments of crinoids, and 215 botanical specimens.