 Morales was born on 1 April 1865 in La Chimba, a barrio on the Mapocho River in Santiago de Chile, the daughter of carpenter Ventura Morales and Marta Infante. Her father died when she was young, and she moved with her mother to Valparaiso. There she started to learn her mother's trade as a seamstress until her mother married her to an older man in 1877, at age 11. Her husband died during the first year of their marriage, and her mother died about the same time.
