Caroline Hentz was born Caroline Lee Whiting to Colonel John and Orpah Whiting on June 1, 1800, in Lancaster, Massachusetts. The youngest of eight children, her father was a Continental Army soldier in the American Revolutionary War, and three of her brothers fought in the War of 1812. Whiting attended Jared Sparks' private school when she was a child. By the age of twelve, she had written both a drama and a fantasy about the Far East. She was seventeen years old when she began teaching at a local Lancaster school. As the youngest of eight children, Hentz observed as "three of her brothers became officers and served in the War of 1812." Their letters home and "tales of patriotic adventure" were an inspiration to her. As a child, she was "popular with her companions, playing games, taking woodland walks, and studying nature." On September 30, 1824, she married Nicholas Marcellus Hentz, "a political refugee from Metz and son of a member of the French National Convention." Nicholas was an instructor at Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts, and the couple used to live nearby. The pair went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1826, when Nicholas was appointed chair of modern languages.
