On a cloudy, hot summer Thursday, a baby girl was born.
The temperature refused to dip below the 70s, even at the dead of night. Up above, the clouds refused to release the family’s sweat as the new Laura Edith Presbrey was held (and screamed). She was the youngest and last child of Silas Dean Presbrey and her mother, Sarah Williams. The two experienced parents would hold on to her the best they could for the next 20 years.
Laura was comfortable. Her father had been born in Taunton, as his parents before him, and so on and so forth. The Presbrey family was of some heft to the town, and Silas was well aware of it. He was a relatively tall man, standing at 5’11, with a reddened-face surrounding blue eyes. He had gone to his public high school before going on to graduate from Harvard in 1860 at the age of 22. Coming back home, Silas pursued studying medicine with a local physician, quickly being accepted into Harvard Medical School in 1861. He took a detour though, devoting the next two years of his life to being the principal to the local high school he had once attended. It was during his first semester at Harvard Medical School that married a woman by the name of Sarah Briggs, a woman from a small town nearby whose family worked in blacksmithing. By 1865, Silas had graduated from Harvard Medical school, with a baby already at home. He soon set up his own private practice in Taunton and was noted for his kind bedside manner. 
Her mother Sarah had come from a similar middle-class upbringing.
Her eldest sister Clara was born just shy of 7 years before Laura while her father was still studying at Harvard. She stuck out from her sisters, with a large nose and brown hair, her skin a few shades darker too despite the same blue eyes of her father and two sisters. Clara was a gifted artist, and as she grew, it became apparent she should study it.
Laura’s second oldest sister was named Florence. She was three years older than her, and the two shared a rope of dirty blonde hair and blue eyes, with pale skin betraying the pink underneath. Like Clara, she stood at 5’6 tall.
I do not know how close Laura was with her siblings, but it must be said Florence was born 4 days before her birth date on August 20th. Their mother celebrated her birthday the day before, on August 19th. All three sisters, and their mother, I must write happily, shared their birthdays within one week. Poor Silas was left in the cold, a somber October 20th doing the trick.
Laura studied at Bristol Academy, a small private school her father was on the Board of Trustees for about half a mile from her family home. It was at this school that Laura studied endlessly for the Smith College entrance exam, a test that occurred over the course of an entire day. In the
In 1889, Smith College offered three different Bachelors degrees each based on a different path of study. They included the Bachelors of Literature, a Bachelors of Science, and the most sought after—a Bachelors of Arts—a degree based on the study of Classics.
Laura had studied the “Classical Course”, leading to a Bachelor of Arts.
“Anna came over before chapel and told us about Laura Presbrey’s disappearance—a terrible thing; her friends are so depressed and almost prostrated.”
—Winifred Ayres, October 14, 1891
“Finished my Whately paper this morning. This afternoon news came that they had found Miss Presbrey’s body in Paradise Pond—poor girl, and her poor distracted friends! This evening May and I went over to see Anna; the Wallace House seems like a
tomb.”
—Winifred Ayres, October 16, 1891
“There is the most awful gloom over the College. Still recitations go on as usual and her best friends attend them. I suppose it really is better, although it seems heartless.”
—Winifred Ayres, October 17, 1891
