She was the daughter of William Crawford, MP for the City of London (1822-1841), who had made a fortune in the British East India Company.
From an early age they took him on journeys which included the English Lake District and Scotland.
In old age, her son described the holidays they had taken together: I think that, without any interruption, for the following ten years, I went each August to the Alps with my parents, and I experienced not only the easy trips, but also many less usual destinations.
We climbed Mount Titlis, the Jazzi Peak, the Mittelhorn, and some other peaks of moderate height.Valeria Azzolini wrote about her in I resoconti di viaggio di Freshfield ("Freshfield's Travel Journals"): Lover of the mountain in the youngest and truest sense, hurry was unknown to her because it wasn't really reaching the top which insterested her, but the captivation of the landscapes she encountered on the path, and thus the hours she spent in that enjoyment.Apart from the members of the family, there was another protagonist in Mrs Freshfield's narrations: the guide, Michel Alphonse Couttet.
And it was surely in those years that the young Freshfield understood the importance, in every mountain action, of the presence of a good guide.