Edith Huntington Reed was born on May 21, 1878 in Westfield, Massachusetts. Her sister Susan Reed Stifler graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1907. Edith graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1901, and in 1902 became the Principal's Assistant at Glenbrook School in Connecticut. In 1905 she moved to New Jersey and taught at the Central Grammar School. In July of 1910, she married Justin Burritt Smith, a graduate of Amherst College. He died in 1912. She taught at a variety of schools, and in 1915 became a missionary in India where she worked until her death in 1924.