

Maud once stated that the three couldn’t have been closer if they’d been sisters. Maud, Bick, and Midge became lifelong friends. Tib’s character was based on another playmate, Marjorie (Midge) Gerlach, who lived nearby in a large house designed by her architect father. Among its many children was a girl Maud’s age, Frances, nicknamed Bick, who was to be Maud’s best friend and the model for Tacy Kelly. Shortly before Maud’s fifth birthday a “large merry Irish family" moved into the house directly across the street. When Maud was a few months old, the Hart family moved two blocks up the street to 333 Center.

The street, Center Street, dead-ended at one of the town’s many hills. Maud’s birthplace was a small house on a hilly residential street several blocks above Mankato’s center business district. “That dear family" was the model for the fictional Ray family.

Her sister, Kathleen, was three years older, and her other sister, Helen, was six years younger. She was the middle of three children born to Thomas and Stella (Palmer) Hart. Maud Hart Lovelace was born on April 25, 1892, in Mankato, Minnesota.
