[1] Perkins inherited her rare gifts through her mother, from a long line of singing ancestors, the Cheneys of Vermont, who for a hundred years had been famous for their fine and powerful voices and exceptional musical culture.

The school year at Stuttgart had just closed, and Perkins presented herself tremblingly to the master for examination, winning such favor that he offered to teach her, contrary to his custom, through vacation, going three times a week to his pupil's bouse and to the last refusing all compensation.

[1] First in Sacramento, California, and later in San Francisco, Cheney was the pioneer of a new school of musical technique, and the signal success achieved by her pupils was proof conclusive that in her treatment of piano-playing, primarily from the physiological standpoint, she enlarged and improved the methods of her masters, Reinecke, Lebert and others.

The physiological investigations, which made Cheney an originator in her field of work, were instigated by her partial paralysis of the right hand and arm, brought on by overtaxation when completing her studies abroad.

In 1876, when Abbey Perkins returned to America from Germany, she was courted by a young musician, poet and litterateur, John Vance Cheney (born December 29, 1848, in Groveland, New York), whom she married and went to live together in California in 1876.