Helen Chassels Drysdale Kinnaird was born on 17 November 1910. She attended Edinburgh Ladies College and James Gillespie's High School in Edinburgh in the 1920s prior to studying at Edinburgh University. She graduated with the degree of M.A. in 1932 and was awarded a teaching certificate in 1934. On 10 October 1937 she married Thomas Kerr from Kilmarnock, originally from Kilmaurs.

During the Second World War, and according to material contained in the collection here, she was a volunteer in the Civil Defence.

Her husband Thomas died in 1969. He had been a managing director of a knitwear firm in Hurlford, Kilmarnock, and was a director and leading shareholder in Kilmarnock Football Club.