Frances Margaret Dickins was born around 1843 in Washington, D.C., to Francis Asbury Dickins and Margaret Randolph. Her father was a farmer who owned $9,755 of real estate in 1850, as well as at least 5 enslaved laborers. She grew up and attended school in Fairfax County, Virginia. She and her family sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War, and she worked in the Treasury Department in Columbia, South Carolina. She returned to her father’s household in Falls Church, Virginia, after the war. She began working as a governess in the 1870s. She eventually moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and she died there on May 24, 1904.

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