[3] Serena Katherine Dandridge was born March 15, 1878, in her family home of "Rose Brake" in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and was raised there.

[4] Dandridge moved back to Washington, D.C., in 1903 and worked as a scientific illustrator for the National Museum of Natural History in the Smithsonian Institution.

[4] She had worked under zoologists Mary Jane Rathbun and Austin Hobart Clark, in order to create images for their publications.

[3] In August 1911, Dandridge and Mary Jane Rathbun were conducting research on marine biology and travelled to South Harpswell, Maine, and Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

[11] She eventually moved back to her family home of "Rose Brake" and lived with her cousin Nina Mitchell; neither woman had married and they operated a dairy farm and raised sheep and cows.