Early Life and Family
Childers, affectionately called "Molly", was born into a reputable Bostonian family that lived at 8 Beacon Street in Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts. Physically disabled from the age of three following a skating accident, Childers was educated at home and wasn't mobile for the first 12 years of her life. Eventually she was able to move enough to ride horses, but she wasn't ever capable of walking. Her father, Dr. Osgood was a student of Dr. Louis Pasteur and spent time with him in France. It was this research with Pasteur that enabled him to bring the first rabies antitoxin back to Boston, and in turn America. The Osgood's ancestry was directly linked to John Quincy Adams and Anne Hutchinson, and Molly was very proud and outspoken about this connection. Her mother Margaret Cushing Osgood encouraged her to read, and to pursue a life in academia as her disability would hinder other careers. Coincidentally, the Osgood family home on Beacon Street was literally next door to the famous Boston Athenæum. Molly spent years of her childhood inside this library, reading for hours every day, and several members of the Osgood family are listed amongst the first proprietors of the institution,,.
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