Dorothy Cecelia Loch was born in England to Scottish parents on June 10, 1888. She was well-educated and held several secretarial positions, including at the British Sociological Society, where she met her husband, Luther Cressman, in 1928. Cressman, in Europe on a travelling fellowship at the time, had recently received his PhD in Sociology from Columbia, divorced anthropologist Margaret Mead, and left the Episcopal priesthood to become a teacher. Loch and Cressman married and moved to the United States, where Cressman later became a professor of Anthropology at the University of Oregon.

During her time in England, Cecelia, as she was most commonly known, had worked for the Fabian Society, a think tank originally founded in 1884 which researched and promoted labor rights, socialist policies, democratic ideals and ethics, and progressive economics. The Society had a pivotal role in the creation of the British Labour Party, and Dorothy was involved in the study, compilation, and publication of labor research.

The Cressmans were deeply involved in the promotion of education and the humanities. Dorothoy Cecelia Cressman died in 1977. Her husband, Luther, memorialized her at the time as his "wife, comrade, friend" who lived with him for half a century "in a fully shared life in education directed for ourselves and our students toward the goal: 'Against the scred myth/to hold the golden heresy of truth.'"