Sara was born in 1841 and moved to Cleveland in 1866 with her dear husband, businessman Charles E. Bolton, who shared her interest in temperance. She was the most prolific juvenile author during Cleveland's Victorian era. The titles of her many published histories, biographies, and poems reflect not only her evangelical and didactic intent, but like the books of some of her contemporaries, her pride in women's achievement. She died in Cleveland in 1916.