She graduated from the Mississippi State College for Women (MSCW) in 1906,[1] and trained as an osteopath at the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville, Missouri, with further education at the College of Osteopathy in Chicago and at the University of Chicago.

"She was almost a genius for diagnosis and was often called in consultation not only by her colleagues in osteopathy but by medical doctors as well," according to one obituary, which also noted that she could drive a car and change a tire "better than most professional chauffeurs.

"[2] Hathorn lived with two of her MSCW instructors, Pauline Van de Graaf Orr and Miriam Greene Paslay, in New York City.

[11] Her niece Betty Hathorn Dreyer lived with the women while she was attending school in New York.

[12] Hathorn died in a New York hospital in 1935, at the age of 51, a few weeks after mastoid surgery.