She was born as Martha Haskins du Puy in 1861 in Pennsylvania, the daughter of Charles Meredith du Puy (1823- 1898), author of A Genealogical History of the DuPuy Family[2] and his wife, Ellen Maria Reynolds, daughter of John Reynolds, an English-born clergyman and his wife, Eleanor Evans.

Her aunt, Caroline Lane Reynolds, travelled to England and married Richard Claverhouse Jebb.

They had five children: In Cambridge, she was elected to the Ladies Dining Society that had been founded by Louise Creighton and Kathleen Lyttleton in 1890.

Other members included the economist Mary Paley Marshall, the classicist Margaret Verrall, the Irish suffragist Mary Ward, former Newnham lecturer Ellen Wordsworth Darwin, the mental health campaigner Ida Darwin, Baroness Eliza von Hügel, and her aunt Caroline Jebb (née Reynolds; then Slemmer).

[citation needed] Her daughter Gwen's childhood memoir Period Piece[1] contains Maud as a central maternal character, illustrated several times.