 While the children were young, the parents emigrated to Nova Scotia, and removed a few years later to Prince Edward Island, where ten years were spent by her father in home missionary work.To secure a more liberal education for their children, the family went to Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1852, where Cunningham was admitted to the girls' high School.Young as she was when the family left Scotland, Cunningham could read and speak two languages, Gaelic and English, though she had never been to school, except the home school in the manse.