Agnes Weinrich was born in 1873 on a prosperous farm in southeast Iowa. Her father and mother were German immigrants and German was the language spoken at home. Following her mother's death in 1879, she was raised by her father, Christian Weinrich. After retiring in 1894, he moved his household, including Agnes and two siblings, to nearby Burlington, Iowa. There, Agnes attended the Burlington Collegiate Institute from which she graduated in 1897. In May 1898, Weinrich and her sister Helen, then called Lena, traveled to Germany with their aunt, a German-born music teacher named Rose Werthmueller. When Werthmueller returned home, they stayed on, living in Berlin with German relatives.
