In 1860, the family moved to the United States, settling in Danvers, Massachusetts, Joseph working as a brickmaker.
In about 1902 or 1903 while in Paris overseeing Edward's education there, Isabel met the love of her life, a French art student, Gaston Lachaise (1882–1935).
There, as well as in New York, Isabel, known as "Madame Lachaise," hosted "literary evenings," attended by friends and artists, including [Rebecca and Paul Strand], Marsden Hartley and Robert Laurent.
Both Isabel and Lachaise were dance enthusiasts, appreciating the work of artists Ruth St Denis—he created several bronze statuettes (now lost, although two plaster models still exist) of her performing several of her famous roles—and Isadora Duncan, and later Anna Pavlova and Uday Shankar.
[2] After Lachaise's sudden death in October 1935, Isabel spent much of the rest of her life promoting and selling his art and attending to her son, who had become mentally unstable.