[2] Her sister, Hattie, served as assistant clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1872, being the first woman to hold such a position.

She also worked at typesetting for a while but found that the pay for women in that field was not very good.

She began teaching at a charity summer school in Boston and then taught in Waterbury, Connecticut.

[2] Abbott and her husband later moved into her family's home in Malden.

She was confined to a wheelchair for the last eleven years of her life and died in Malden at the age of 74.