Kate Gannaway Trent, of Dillwyn, Virginia was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1900, shortly before her family returned to their ancestral home at Caryswood Plantation in Buckingham County, Virginia. She attended high school at [then] State Normal School for Women's training school, from which she graduated in 1919. Trent then earned her teaching certificate from State Normal School in 1922. From 1922 to 1924 she taught at Grace Arents School in Richmond, Virginia. Trent returned to [by-then] State Teachers College in 1924 and earned her Bachelor of Science degree in 1926. From 1926 to 1930 she was a teaching supervisor at the State Teachers College in Fredericksburg, Virginia. In 1931 she earned her master degree from Columbia University and then took a teaching position at Michigan State College in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Trent then returned to the State Teachers College in Fredericksburg in 1933, where she taught for three years before taking a position at Wilson Teachers College in Washington, D.C. in 1936. In 1947, she returned to State Teachers College in Farmville where she served first as a supervisor in the elementary school and then as a professor in the Education Department. She remained at the school until her retirement in 1971.