Sarah J. Smith, daughter of Sylvanus and Anne (Springsteel) Smith, was born on July 31, 1831, in Brooklyn, New York. Sarah was the oldest of 11 children; her parents were farmers and owned land in Queens County, then part of Long Island.[1][4] Her sister Susan McKinney Steward was the first African-American woman in New York State to earn a medical degree, and the third in the United States.[3]