“ She was forward in mathematics and showed in her early life an aptitude for logical and philosophical reasoning. The greater part of her education was acquired in a public school, but she was also a student in Canaan Union Academy and Kimball Union Academy. ”

“ She began teaching at fifteen and was thus employed summer and winter for seven years. At twenty-two years of age she was married to G. H. Kimball, from whom she was divorced live years later. In 1866 she was married to Louis Bristol, a lawyer of New Haven, Conn., and they removed to southern Illinois. In 1869 she published a volume of poems, and in that year she gave her first public lecture, which circumstance seems to have changed the course of her intellectual career. ”