Jeannette May Bickford was born on May 23, 1896 in Northwood, New Hampshire. Her father was James A. Bickford, an undertaker. She attended Coe's Northwood Academy in Northwood Center and went to Mount Holyoke College in 1913. In October of that year she withdrew from school due to an illness. She was readmitted in the fall of 1914. After graduating in 1918 with a B.A. in mathematics she taught at several high schools in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. In 1923 she received the Harvard Annex Scholarship to study mathematics at the Radcliffe College Graduate School. She continued to teach after receiving her Master's degree in 1924 and became the head of the Mathematics Department at Northwood Narrows High School in New Hampshire. On June 21, 1930 she married Daniel Thurber Bridges. After taking several years off, she returned to teaching. They had two children and settled in Kittery, Maine after living in New Hampshire for a number of years. She died on December 12, 1986 in Kittery, Maine at the age of ninety.