She moved back to Randolph the following year and lived for the next decade and a half in the home of a childhood friend. With the death of her mother in 1880 and her father three years later, Freeman found herself alone and left with an inheritance of less than one thousand dollars. In 1876, following the failure of her father’s business, Freeman’s family, virtually impoverished, moved into the home of a local minister where her mother worked as a housekeeper. She left after only a year, however, and completed her formal education at West Brattleboro Seminary. Upon graduating from high school Freeman entered Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1870. Her father, an unsuccessful carpenter, moved the family to Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1867 and took part-ownership in a dry-goods business. Mary Wilkins Freeman was born in the small New England village of Randolph, Massachusetts, located about fifteen miles south of Boston, where she lived until the age of fifteen.
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