Sarah Cutts Frerichs was born in Athens, Alabama, on the 5th of August, 1926, in the "pastorium" of the Athens Baptist Church to her parents, the Rev. Dr and Mrs. Allen S. Cutts. Her mother died when Sarah was six months old and she lived with her aunt, Esther Smith, for the next three years in Moultrie, Georgia. Upon her father's remarriage she returned to her father's household. Her childhood was spent as the only child of a Southern Baptist clergyman who moved frequently during her childhood. Her childhood and her elementary education were spent in Montgomery, Alabama, Jacksonville, Florida and for a decade from 1930 to 1940 in Pensacola, Florida.
In 1940 her father was called to the senior pastorate at Second Baptist Church in Liberty, Missouri, the church serving as the college church for a liberal arts college founded by Southern Baptists, William Jewell College. Her major fields of interest were English literature and philosophy. Completing an A.B in 1947, she entered the Brown University Graduate School and completed an A.M. degree in English in 1949 with a Master's thesis on "Industry, Trade and Commerce in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry." In 1949 she became an Instructor and Director of the Composition Laboratory in the General College of Boston University. Following an appointment at Barrington College, she joined the English Department of Rhode Island College as an Assistant Professor in 1965 and taught there until 1975. In 1974 she completed a PhD in English at Brown University with a dissertation on "Elizabeth Missing Sewell: A Minor Novelist's Search for the Via Media in the Education of Women In the Victorian Era." In 1977 she became an Assistant Professor of English at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts and served there until her retirement in 1994.
In 1949 she married Ernest S. Frerichs and in 1950 they moved to Rhode Island for a lifelong residency. She was the mother of three children: John A., David S., and Elizabeth (Betsy) A. Frerichs.
Last modified 8 April 2008