Mary Mapes Dodge was bom on January 26, 1830, in New York City, the second of six children of James Mapes and Sophia Furman Mapes, descendants of a long line of New York patricians of Dutch and English ancestry. Although the family was well connected, Dodge knew genteel poverty in her early years because her father, an intellectually curious scientist, lacked a steady income. Like many women of her time and social class, she was educated at home.

In 1848 her father moved the family to a farm south of Newark, New Jersey, both to cut living expenses and to conduct an experimental farm, where he showed how artificial fertilizers could revive worn-out farm land. His major financial backer was William Dodge III, a New York lawyer, whom Mary married in 1851. The couple settled into a socially active life in New York City and had two sons...