[1] Upon completion of her education in the mid-1780s she returned to New York, where some called her "the most beautiful woman in the United States".

[2] There she caught the eye of Elbridge Gerry, a Marblehead, Massachusetts politician twenty years her elder who was serving in the Confederation Congress.

[3] The family finances were troubled in the later years of her husband's life; debts that his brother had incurred and Gerry had guaranteed were only paid off from the salary he received as Vice President of the United States between 1813 and his death in 1814, leaving the widow with an estate that was rich in land and poor in cash.

Massachusetts Senator Christopher Gore proposed that the vice presidential salary would be paid to her for the rest of her life, but Congress rejected the idea because it might set a precedent for such payments.

[4] She was thereafter supported by her children, living with her son, James Thompson Gerry, the commander of the USS Albany, and at least two of her daughters at 17 Temple Court, in New Haven.