Charlotte Augusta Lennox Crisfield (maiden name: Pearce) was born in Maryland on September 12, 1837, to James Alfred Pearce and Martha Jane Laird. Her father was a Whig politician who represented Maryland in the United States Senate from 1843 until 1862. By 1860, James Pearce owned at least $31,000 in real estate and $16,000 in personal property, including at least nine slaves. Charlotte grew up in Kent County, Maryland, and she married lawyer Arthur Crisfield there on November 17, 1863. They had five children together: James Alfred Pearce, born on November 28, 1864; Julia Ethelinda Page, born on April 1, 1865; John Woodland, born on July 26, 1867; Arthur Woodland, born around 1878, and an unnamed baby, born around 1880.

The family moved to Oregon sometime in the 1870s. In 1875, Charlotte published a book of poetry, entitled A Wayside Flower and Other Poems. It apparently received little public notice, although The Baltimore Sun praised it as a “collection of pretty verses.” The family returned to the east coast in 1879. The 1880 census recorded them in Hornellsville, New York. Shortly afterward, however, they moved to Washington, D.C., where Arthur became an assistant librarian at the Library of Congress. In 1893, she contributed a copy of A Wayside Flower to a “library of women’s work” at the Columbian Exposition. She died in Washington, D.C., on May 7, 1915, and was buried in Chestertown, Maryland.