Career
Prior to that time, she worked as a schoolteacher. Myrtle was the seventh child (of eight) of an Ohio businessman-farmer. Her parents were strict Methodists, but Myrtle rejected their puritanical teachings.
She contracted tuberculosis at a young age.
Also at a young age she developed a strong enjoyment of reading. At the age of twenty-one she enrolled in the (one year) "Literary Course for Ladies" at Oberlin College.
After graduating in 1867, she taught in public schools in Clinton, Missouri, spending the next thirteen years there, except for a year in 1877-1878 spent recovering from tuberculosis in Denison, Texas. They lived initially in Gunnison, Colorado, Then moved to Pueblo, Colorado, where their first two sons were born, Lowell in 1882 and Rickert in 1884.