Susan came into the world in a cold, dreary season.

The event was looked forward to with dread by the mother, but when the little one arrived she received a warm and loving welcome.

She was born into a staid and quiet but very comfortable home, where great respect and affection existed between father and mother.
William Cullen Bryant, whose birth-place was but twenty miles distant, wrote of this immediate locality: I stand upon my native hills again, Broad, round and green, that in the summer sky, With garniture of waving grass and grain, Orchards and beechen forests, basking lie; While deep the sunless glens are scooped between, Where brawl o'er shallow beds the streams unseen.
Each night in early childhood she watched the sun set behind the great dome of "Old Greylock," that noble mountain-peak so famed in the literature of Berkshire, from whose lofty summit one looks across four States.

"It lifts its head like a glorified martyr," said Beecher, and Julia Taft Bayne wrote: Come here where Greylock rolls Itself toward heaven; in these deep silences, World-worn and fretted souls, Bathe and be clean.
To the child's idea its top was very close against the sky, and its memory and inspiration remained with her through life.
Susan was very intelligent and precocious.

At the age of three she was sent to the grandmother's to remain during the advent of the fourth baby at home, and while there was taught to spell and read.