Lucretia Edgerton Jackson was born in the town of Mexico, Oswego Co. N. Y., Feb. 26, 1810, being the daughter of Judge Elias Brewster, an early resident of the town, and a man of force and prominence in the community. She was a direct descendant of Elder William Brewster, sometimes called the Chief of the Pilgrims, and used to pride herself on her good Puritan blood which showed itself in her a worthy descendant of the Elder, in her wonderfully developed character, noted for its quietness, steadfastness, her sunny disposition and Christian graces.

In 1830 she married James C. Jackson at that time a resident of Manlius, Onondaga Co., N. Y., and was a help meet indeed to him in all his work in the early temperance and anti-slavery days, sheltering at her house in Peterboro, N. Y., ofttimes when her husband was away on his lecturing trips, slaves who were en route by the underground railway from the South to Canada in the years from 1830 to 1845. When Dr. Jackson became interested in health reform in 1847, making his first venture in this direction as practicing physician in the control of the Glen Haven Water Cure at the head of Skaneateles Lake, Cayuga Co., N. Y., she was foremost in all the affairs of a competent and busy housewife.

Coming to Dansville with him in 1858, she was for some eight or ten years active in the management of the culinary and housekeeping departments of Our Home on the Hillside, but eventually yielded this position to her daughter-in-law Katherine J. Jackson. From this time until the day of her death in Feb. 1890, at which time she lacked a few days of being 80 years old, she lived in comparative retirement, for some years at Dr. Jackson's Lake home at Maple Beach, Conesus lake, and the rest of the time at the family residence known at Brightside.