Margaret ("Maggie") Estelle Fogelsong Ball Lloyd was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1933 to Fred and Allene Furois Fogelsong. Her parents had grown up near each other on small farms along False Bottom Creek just north of the Black Hills in Lawrence County, South Dakota. The family returned to South Dakota when Maggie was six. There, Maggie and her brother grew up "surrounded by grandparents, uncles, cousins, and horses, attending a one-room schoolhouse.