Her brother Freelan O. Stanley bought her a large house at 22 Harley Street in Ashmont Hill, Dorchester, Massachusetts.

After her husband James died in 1898 of blood poisoning at the age of 41, Chansonetta and Dorothy were forced to leave Dorchester and move to Newton, Massachusetts.

Chansonetta is unique in that relatively few photographers, especially women, in the beginning of the 20th century were focused on the "domestic vernacular" especially in rural northern New England.

[1] The Stanley Museum in Kingfield, Maine owns the largest collection of Chansonetta Stanley Emmons photographic prints and glass plate negatives in the world including her brilliantly hand-colored glass lantern slides.

While not a typical arrangement for the Society, it is providing an opportunity to expand the viability and audience of the collection which includes over 1,500 images of Maine farm and family life from the early 20th century through the 1930s as well to foster scholarship in the photographic medium invented by Chansonsetta Stanley's brothers, a process later sold to Kodak.