[1] Kerr's father died in 1796, dividing his fortune between his daughter Jane and his wife (who later remarried).
Kerr (then Apreece) was a rich widow who had travelled in Europe and she moved to Edinburgh where she established herself at the centre of Scottish literary society.
She had met Germaine de Staël but that influence is more reliably assigned to Diodata Saluzzo Roero.
Nevertheless, Lady Davy travelled to Rome when she heard that her husband had been taken ill there, and she accompanied him to Geneva where he died in 1829.
[1] She left her fortune to her first cousin, with which he purchased a large house and estate by the River Severn in Gloucestershire.