Her father, the Gen. Jesse Hale Moore, scholar, clergyman, soldier and statesman, who died while serving his government as United States Consul in Callao, Peru, was at the time of her birth, president of the Paris academy.

During the Civil War, in which nearly all the male relatives and friends, including her future husband, had enlisted for the defense of the Union, she commenced the study of politics.

Her education was finished at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, special honors in music and literary composition, prize winner in elocution.

[2][3] After leaving school, she attended to the social duties required of a family in a prominent position, her father at that time being the representative in Congress of the seventh congressional district of Illinois.

[4] In Decatur, Illinois, on November 14, 1870, she married Judge Charles C. McComas, and for the next five years she devoted herself to the duties of wife, mother and housekeeper.

Her husband, believing that he could quickly retrieve his lost fortune in a new place, emigrated to Kansas, where his wife and family, consisting of two daughters, joined him in 1877.

She was a correspondent for three California papers during the World's Fair, and was a special contributor of travel sketches in the Los Angeles Times and various magazines.

She completed a book on child life in California, Under the Peppers; was a writer of short stories, articles on politics and economics;[2] and served as associate editor of the Pacific Household Journal.

[4] Her lecturers included topics of, Politics in the Home, Individual Education in the Public Schools, and The Common Sense Rearing of Children.

[2] For several years, she lived at 440 Riverside Drive, New York City with her daughter Carroll, an actress, but when the latter went abroad as an entertainer with the A. E. F., McComas returned to California where she resumed active management of her ranch in San Dimas.