Caroline Flanders was raised on a farm in the Meshanticut Park section of western Cranston, Rhode Island. She graduated from Pembroke College in 1926 and then received a degree in Social Work from Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. After college she lived in New York City working for the Charity Organization Community Service Society. Shortly after the Depression she was the Chief of the Bureau of Information and Inquiry under Mayor La Guardia in New York City. She moved back to Rhode Island a few years after she retired. She passed away in April 1993.