Though she belonged to one of the wealthiest families of Maryland, she believed in the doctrine of self-support and left home to engage in teaching, first in Kentucky and North Carolina, and afterward in New York and Connecticut.

She graduated first in her class in the Frederick Female Seminary, in 1872, having studied mental and moral philosophy, evidences of Christianity, modern history, mythology, rhetoric and composition.

[2] After teaching for four years at the Frederick Female Seminary, she left home for a position in Daughters College, Harrodsburg, Kentucky, where she afterwards taught Latin, French, art and music.

In Harrodsburg, as well as in Tarboro, North Carolina, where she taught music in 1887 and 1888, and in Miss Hogarth's school, Goshen, New York, where she acted as substitute for some weeks in January, 1890, she made many devoted friends and did superior work as a teacher.

Her essay on "Prehistoric Greece as we find it in the Poems of Homer " was read before that society at the annual reunion at Miss Ticknor's, in Boston, Massachusetts, in June, 1883.