Penelope Pagett was born on June 17, 1728, in the Edenton area of colonial North Carolina. She was one of three daughters of Samuel Pagett, a physician, and Elizabeth Blount Pagett. Through her mother she belonged to the prominent Blount family, whose members held land and public influence in the Albemarle region. Penelope’s childhood was marked by severe loss. Her father and older sister died when she was still young, and her mother died by the time Penelope was about ten. She was then raised within the household of her remaining sister, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth’s husband, John Hodgson. As a girl of the colonial gentry, Penelope probably received a domestic education emphasizing reading, religion, household accounts, sewing, and the management of servants and provisions. No detailed school record survives, so specific subjects or tutors cannot be identified with confidence. Her later ability to oversee property and conduct complicated family affairs, however, demonstrates practical literacy and formidable administrative ability. Responsibility arrived unusually early. When John Hodgson died, Penelope helped care for her sister and the Hodgson children. After Elizabeth’s death, Penelope continued raising her nieces and nephews. At seventeen she married John Hodgson’s brother, also named John Hodgson, in part preserving and supporting the combined family household. Her first husband died within a few years, leaving Penelope a young widow with children and additional dependents. She later married the wealthy planter James Craven, who also died, and then Thomas Barker, an attorney and public official. These repeated bereavements made Penelope experienced in estate management long before her celebrated political action. When Thomas Barker spent years in England as a colonial agent, she directed their property and family interests in North Carolina. Before becoming associated with the Edenton Tea Party, she had already survived orphanhood, assumed care for relatives, managed widowhood and remarriage, and learned to operate independently within a society that legally restricted women’s authority. Those experiences help explain the confidence with which she later organized a public protest.