Before receiving her Ph.D. and becoming the head of the Mathematics Department at Kansas State Agricultural College (now Kansas State University), Mary Winston was known by friends and family as May. Born in Forreston, Illinois, in 1869, May was the fourth child of Dr. Thomas Winston and Caroline Eliza Mumford. The first daughter of the family, she was doted on. May's namesake and Caroline's sister lived with the family and helped care for the children. 

Caroline fostered May's endless search for knowledge. She and her six surviving siblings were homeschooled by Caroline, who aspired to provide her children with a well-rounded education and prepare them for college. Although their upbringing was considerably humble, Dr. Winston and his wife carried on a philosophy to provide their children with a better childhood and future than they themselves had. And it was this philosophy and continued hard work that would set May up for success and prepare her for college in the future.

Though most of her education was done at home, May and three of her siblings were enrolled for a year in the local elementary school in 1879 after her mother had been offered a year-long position at the high school. May wrote to her oldest brother, Eddie, about her experience in Latin and arithmetic. Her Latin class was studying Caesar, but arithmetic was an entirely different story. "'...in arithmetic we are f[l]ourishing miserably,'" she wrote to Eddie, explaining that the teacher's poor instruction was attributed to the difficult textbook.

May's education at home seemed to be leaps and bounds above the local school system. At that time, she was teaching her three-year-old brother to read and was taking penmanship lessons from a visiting professor in town. However, Caroline seemed to think that May had not yet benefited from such studies, writing in her own correspondence, "'I hope she will profit from them but the improvement is hardly evident as of yet.'"

Later letters seem to justify May's lack of enthusiasm for writing, though. In an apologetic letter to Eddie, May explained why he'd received more letters from her sister than from May herself. "'Gene and I are different girls. Gene likes to write and she likes to spell. I don't. I like Arithmetic and Algebra.'"

May also assisted her siblings in their education, finding teaching an agreeable task. In correspondence, about teaching her brother to read, May wrote, "'I promised him that if he learned six or more words before he is four years old, I would take him to visit the [public] school and buy him his first reader.'" Not only was May preparing herself for a college education, but she perhaps also found a passion for teaching early on at home.

Where she lacked in penmanship, May excelled in mathematics early on. Her mother wrote to Eddie in 1881: "'Did I write you what excellent work May is doing in Geometry? She made an original demonstration of the eighteenth Proposition before having looked at the one the author gives. Pretty well for twelve isn't it?'"

Her education at home had been improved compared to May's miserable arithmetic experience in public school the year before. However, not all of May's time was spent studying, as she took leave of her mother's school at age eleven. For a few weeks, she learned housework after the family's hired girl left and another was not immediately available. Still, tasks like cooking and housekeeping were seen as an addition to May's education, albeit in a different branch. It wasn't long, though, before May returned to the familiarity of the schoolroom.

Eventually, though, May would outgrow her mother's school in preparation for college. This came in 1883 when Carrie received a list of books prescribed by the University of Wisconsin "for applicants to have read and understood." It was a transitional time for Carrie's schoolroom, and she began assigning weekly essays to her older children, who would soon be attending college. 

Fourteen-year-old May began preparing to head off to college within the year, and those pursuits in endless study, constructed and guided by her mother, would soon prove effective in entrance exam season. May and her brother, Paré, would be headed to the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Caroline Eliza Mumford: The Winston Family Matriarch