She was the highest-paying patient, and the only one accompanied by a resident slave, at the Pennsylvania Hospital, then one of the few institutions that clinically treated the mentally ill.[1] The girls attended the academy of Mme.
Aimée Sigoigne, an émigré from Saint-Domingue, who had left during the revolution that established the republic of Haiti.
[1] The girls showed their literary talent early, as Eleanor wrote her first poem at age eleven.
In the late 1830s in Natchez, they came under the influence of Eliza DuPuy, a contributor to various women’s magazines and one of the earliest professional Southern female writers.
Under the tutelage of DuPuy, at the age of seventeen Eleanor wrote the novella Agatha in 1837, following her mother's death.
[2] From work the Ware sisters did together after returning to Natchez, in 1843 they published their first joint volume of poetry, The Wife of Leon, under the byline, "The Two Sisters of the West.” Their father Nathaniel Ware encouraged their writing and arranged for a printer in Cincinnati, Ohio.
In 1846, they published their second volume of poetry, The Indian Chamber, And Other Poems, with a New York printer commissioned by their father.