[5] Her father, Stratford Benjamin Woodberry, was for years a distinguished bass singer of Charleston, South Carolina.

[6] Her mother, Victoria Ida Cocroft Woodberry, hailed from an old family of Beaufort, South Carolina.

[4][7] She spent the first thirteen years of her life in a small town, Williston, South Carolina, and there received her early education.

[9] Woodberry was a close reader of current events, and did a great deal to popularize this study among the young women of Lucy Cobb Institute.

In 1894, Woodberry was elected to the chair of Natural Science in Lucy Cobb Institute,[10] and was probably the only young woman in the South who had a laboratory of physical and chemical apparatus, and performed the experiments for her class.

She won a prize of US$50 for the best essay on the method of improving small industries in the South, offered by The Augusta Chronicle.

She had an intense sympathy with girls who earned their own living, and she was warmly interested in all that concerned their progress and encouragement, Having been a stenographer herself, she knew from experience the realities of a vocation.

[7] Woodberry was an enthusiastic advocate of organization of women for study, whether of science, literature, art, music or civics.