Charlotte Hawkins Brown, founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute, was born in Henderson, North Carolina. Her family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she attended the public schools of the city. She graduated from the State Normal School in Salem in 1901, and returned immediately to North Carolina, determined to start a “farm-life” school. Near Sedalia she found an unoccupied shack. With the cooperation of residents and area churches, she opened a school and completed a year of teaching. She returned to Massachusetts in the summer, organized a Sedalia Club to support the work of the school, and interested two families who underwrote the work for one year and donated a large tract of land for future growth and development.