She was one of seven surviving children of the cotton planter William Patrick Stone, who moved the family to Stonington Plantation near Delta, Louisiana,[3] and died in 1855.

[4] After her mother, Amanda Susan Ragan Stone,[5] became widowed, she purchased and managed the plantation called "Brokenburn",[4] and its 150 slaves; it was located in northeastern Louisiana, not far from the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi.

[citation needed] Stone supported the cause of the Southern States with a youthful-romantic enthusiasm, even though the picture of just war, in which "dashing young officers in magnificent uniforms are inspired by patriotic maidens to heroic exploits,"[6] gave way to the reality on how the Union front approached their plantation.

In 1862, after the Union's first gunboats took up position on the banks of the Mississippi River just a few miles from their plantation, the skirmishes in the area increased with the Vicksburg campaign, leaving the family in March 1863 to escape through the swamps of Louisiana.

In this "dark corner of the Confederacy," as Stone calls it, she received news of the deaths of her brothers Walter and Coleman on the battlefield, further eclipsing her mood.