Alice Ives was born in Pavilion, Illinois, January 15, 1853. Her parents were Franklin Benedict Ives, one of the first pupils to be graduated from the Rush Medical College of Chicago, and Frances M. Luce, his wife. Dr. Ives practiced as a specialist in Chicago, in which city his son and two of his three daughters resided. Mrs. Ives died in 1885. She was descended from a Revolutionary soldier of Connecticut who, when word came to him that there was fighting at Lexington, shouldered his gun and followed Israel Putnam to Massachusetts. Family tradition also claims for her a collateral descent from Ethan Allen, of Ticonderoga. In the 1830s, her paternal grandparents moved with their large family from Chautauqua County, New York, to a little settlement in Illinois known as Franklin Grove. At about the same time, her maternal grandmother, twice widowed, journeyed with her twelve children from Lewis County, New York, for the same destination. These families shared many sentiments in common, being strict Baptists, staunch abolitionists, and strong prohibitionists, and there was much intermarrying between them.