Sarah M. Doolittle was born around 1845 in New York to Loren Doolittle and Phebe Worth. Her father was a lawyer who owned $550 of personal property in 1860. She grew up and attended school in Wolcott, New York. The family moved to Dowagiac, Michigan, sometime in the 1860s, and by 1870, she was working as a dress maker. She married Willis Farr there in the 1870s, and the couple had no children. They lived in Dowagiac, and her husband worked as a manufacturer. By 1900, her brother Silas was living in their household. She died in Dowagiac on January 19, 1908.