work and household labour typical of mid-19th-century rural Ontario. As the youngest child in a household led by a widowed mother, she was raised in an environment that required practical skills, cooperation, and self-reliance.

The Hunter family were part of a wider community of Irish immigrant settlers in Upper Canada. Hoodless's paternal grandparents had emigrated from County Monaghan in Ireland to Peel County in 1836. She spent her childhood and youth on the family farm before leaving Brant