She was involved in the temperance movement and avidly supported her husband's 1908 Prohibition campaign that banned liquor statewide.

[2] Through her mother, Cornelia was descended from Colonel Joseph Williams, an officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolution and a delegate to the Hillsborough Convention.

[3][4] Her paternal ancestors were planters and slaveholders who owned a 5,000-acre plantation located in the Orange Mound area in Memphis.

Her paternal grandfather, David Deaderick, was a banker, businessman, and Revolutionary War veteran who arrived in Jonesborough in 1783 and later served in the Tennessee General Assembly.

[7] She married Robert Broadnax Glenn, a lawyer and a distant maternal cousin, on January 8, 1878, in Knoxville.

[2] The family later moved to Winston-Salem, where her husband became a prosecuting attorney for North Carolina's Ninth Judicial District.

[2] She required the servants to serve all meals, including breakfast, formally on full silver place settings.

Upon moving back to Winston-Salem after her husband's term was over, she attended that city's First Presbyterian Church and was active in the parish's missionary causes.