Gwendoline Frances Eliza MacFarlane was born in Llandilo, Carmarthenshire on 20 February 1866 and was christened there on 3 April 1886. Her parents were Thomas Macfarlane and his wife Eleanor Susan nee Christie. Thomas was born in Scotland and the 1871 Census shows him as a schoolteacher living at Bays Hill, Llandilo with a family of 3 sons and 5 daughters, 3 pupils, a nurse, a housemaid, a cook and a nursemaid. By 1881 when Gwendoline was 15 she was a pupil living at High Grade School at Carmarthen St. Peter. In April 1896 aged 30 she married Thomas Henry Howell at Hay in Breconshire.
In 1897 she had a daughter Gwendoline in Barton Regis Gloucestershire, on 15 July. A second daughter, Mary Cecilia (known as Molly), was born on 19 July 1900, the birth registered in Bristol. In 1911 the family were still living in Bristol at a property in Westbury on Trym and had a servant living with them. Thomas was working as a cashier and accountant at a corn merchant's at the time. He passed away on 17 September 1937 in Plymouth, Devon and Gwendoline died a year later on 18 August 1938 in Coventry, aged 72. She had been living at Five Beeches in Stoneleigh Road. In her will her executors were her daughter Mary who was a spinster, and Gwendoline who had become the wife of Frank Steel - Perry.