Hamlin Garland was born in a narrow upland valley (a “coolly”) near West Salem, Wisconsin, on 14 September 1860. His father was a farmer, and Garland spent his youth as a farm boy in western Wisconsin and in northeastern Iowa, near Osage. From 1876 to 1881 he worked on the family farm from spring to fall and attended the Cedar Valley Seminary in Osage during the winter. (“Seminary” was a western name for any school offering advanced education.) Garland's graduation in 1881 coincided with his father's decision to resettle his family on new land in South Dakota. But Garland himself was dissatisfied with farming as a way of life. Instead of joining his family, he spent three miscellaneous years in the West as a school teacher, carpenter, and South Dakota land claimant. In October 1884, he sold his Dakota claim and moved to Boston in order to prepare himself for a career as a teacher of literature.

This recital of the bare facts of Garland's youth casts considerable light on the subject matter of Main-Travelled Roads. Garland's experiences as a farm boy are the source of his intimate knowledge of the details of farm life and of his awareness that the seasonal cycle of planting and harvest is the principal reality of a farm existence. His biography also suggests the source and location of the three “matters” of his middle-border fictional world.