However, Maria's health suffered in Jamaica, and they subsequently moved to Philadelphia in 1783, where he was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1785.

To supplement his budding law practice, he also took side jobs editing the Pennsylvania Herald from 1787 to 1788 and the Columbian Magazine from 1787 to 1789.

He then published three succeeding volumes under the title, Reports of Cases Ruled and Adjudged in the Several Courts of the United States, and of Pennsylvania, Held at the Seat of the Federal Government (1797, 1799, 1806).

Later, he wrote: "I have found such miserable encouragement for my reports that I have determined to call them all in, and devote them to the rats in the State-House.

Dallas helped found the Democratic-Republican party in Pennsylvania and advocated a strict construction of the new Constitution.

[citation needed] In 1798, Dallas represented Patrick Lyon, who was falsely accused in the 1798 Bank of Pennsylvania heist.

The war nearly bankrupted the federal government by the time Dallas replaced Gallatin as Treasury Secretary.

Her husband's father was a marine insurance underwriter and importer in Philadelphia who served as United States Postmaster General from 1776 to 1782.

Her husband's mother, known as Sally, was the only daughter of Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, and his common-law wife, Deborah Read.