She was curator of manuscripts at the Tennessee State Library and Archives and was co-editor of the first volume of The Papers of Andrew Jackson.
[2] During the period 1939 to 1945, she worked with Blanche Henry Clark and Chase Mooney to create what are known as the Owsley charts, which are "a composite of Schedules I (land ownership), H (slave ownership), and IV (products of agriculture) of the unpublished Federal Census for Tennessee, 1850 and 1860.
[7] Robert V. Remini made a point to credit her in the introduction to his Essays about Andrew Jackson: "Since I first met her in the manuscript room of the Tennessee Historical Library, she has assisted me in countless ways to find, decipher, transcribe, and edit Jackson manuscripts.
She has read drafts of several of my books and offered criticisms and advice based on her long experience and expert knowledge of Tennessee history.
She assisted her late husband in his research and writing, and I know from my own personal experience how much she must have contributed to the excellence of his distinguished monographs.