As a young women, she became a Christian and a member of the Church of Ireland and began her lifelong ministry of establishing schools, charitable institutions and visiting underprivileged families.
[5] Her later diaries written in Victoria, Australia, show she was a woman of faith and daily prayer believing her calling was to minister to mothers and poor families.
In 1843, after the death of her mother-in-law, and her sister-in-law with two sons had left the household, Jane and Hussey Macartney moved to a parish near Dublin.
[10][8] The Macartneys were regarded as being from the Irish upper middle class but their evangelical Church of England faith led to them redistributing some of their funds to less privileged families and individuals combined with efforts for their moral and religious improvement.
[12][13] On 5 August 1848, the Museum of the Royal Dublin Society recorded that Mrs Hussey Burgh Macartney of Melbourne also donated a preserved albatross.
[14] Jane and her family moved into the newly built Deanery in 1869 at 188 Hotham Street East Melbourne, next to Bishopscourt where Bishop Perry and his wife, Frances lived.
The Deanery was a large nine-room single storey stone house with French windows leading to a return verandah and a sweeping garden.
When she stayed home she spent her time sewing, writing letters, managing the household, walking in the garden with her youngest child, "Franny" or preparing bundles of clothes for jumble sales or to send to needy families.
[3][6][19] In Ireland as a single young woman, Jane Hardman helped establish a girls' school in a nearby underprivileged area.
[5] After her marriage and move to the remote Irish countryside, Macartney continued to visit and assist poor families, travelling by boat and carriage and also welcomed people to her house when they came for medicine and advice.
Two doctors, John Maund and Richard Tracy were aiming to rent a house in Albert Street, East Melbourne for a maternity hospital.
[5][4] The women's management committee at first met weekly, admitted patients, appointed staff and negotiated contracts with builders and suppliers.
She does not seem to have been on the committee of the Benevolent Asylum, an institution for destitute men, women and children, but she visited there and donated to it £1 9/- 2d (one pound, nine shillings and tuppence).
Children were free to leave and could live with extended family if they had any, but they usually stayed and were trained and apprenticed as gardeners, carpenters, domestic servants by the time they 14 years old.
[3] The writer of one of her obituaries described her as having "uncommon energy" and "The only question, when drawn in different directions, was which should be attended to, of apparently conflicting duties; but on went the unceasing effort for the glory of God and the welfare of her fellow-creatures.