Artist and author Eliza Allen Starr, born in Deerfield, Massachusetts, showed early promise in writing and art. At age thirteen she was sent to Boston, Massachusetts, to finish her education. She opened a studio there when she was twenty-one. Eventually, Starr moved on to teaching and lived in other places, including Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Natchez, Mississippi, and Brooklyn, New York. In 1854, she converted to Catholicism, and religious study became a vital part of her life. She moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1855 and began to write, completing at least fourteen books before she died. One of her books, The Three Archangels and the Guardian Angels in Art, earned her a medallion from Pope Leo XIII. Starr was the first woman to receive the Laetare Medal from the University of Notre Dame, the oldest and most prestigious honor given to American Catholics.