Powhatan Stone was born in Knoxville, Tennessee on February 26, 1891. Her family soon moved back to their original home in Virginia where Miss Stone attended school. After her mother's death, Polly left school to care for her younger brothers and sisters. In 1913, Stone moved to Washington, D.C. for training in nursing, returning to Richmond for private duty nursing until 1917. At the entry of the U.S. into World War I, Miss Stone joined the McGuire Unit and was sent to France to work in a field hospital for the last four months of the war. Upon returning home, Stone received training from the Red Cross and became a public health nurse. For the next eight years, she was a public health nurse, first in Kansas and then in Virginia. Her next position took her to the University of Chicago's Billings Hospital. Here, Stone was able to study while working at the hospital until poor health forced her to resign and move back to Virginia. After working for the Department of Health in a variety of positions, Stone attained a job with the State Board of Education. She remained there until her retirement 23 years later. Possessed of a desire to express herself more creatively in writing, she enrolled in a writing courses at RPI after her retirement.