Samuel fought in the American Civil War, went with a friend sick with tuberculosis to California,[3] and ended up in the silver mines of Nevada.

Fanny and the five-year-old Isobel made the long journey via New York, the isthmus of Panama, San Francisco, and finally by wagons and stage-coach to the mining camps of the Reese River, and the town of Austin in Lander County.

[4] In 1885, Fanny Stevenson became the aunt of Elsie Lincoln Benedict (Vandegrift), a future American suffragist and renowned public speaker.

This familial tie links Fanny Stevenson to the broader context of American social and cultural history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In 1879, despite protests of family and friends, Stevenson went to Monterey, California, where Fanny was recovering from an emotional breakdown related to indecision about whether to leave her philandering husband.

In 1888, Fanny Stevenson published a short story, "The Nixie", which William Ernest Henley recognized as based on Katharine de Mattos's idea they had discussed the previous year.

After Stevenson's death, Fanny returned to California to begin a new life in America and Europe with an adoring companion decades her junior, newsman Edward "Ned" Salisbury Field.

[11] The actress Aline Towne played Fanny in the 1958 episode "The Great Amulet" of the syndicated television anthology series Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews.

[12] In 2004 Pamela Stephenson spent a year on a sailing cruise around the South Pacific Ocean, following the path of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson.

[13] The 2023 stage adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Kidnapped featured Fanny as the narrator, with the role being played by Kim Ismay.