She aided in his work with The Nation, reading other newspapers, keeping and filing reference clippings, going on to become and editor and anonymous contributor to the United Irishman from February 1848.

For three years, Mitchel lived in Newry and Dublin, before she joined her husband Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in June 1851, where they settled in the village of Bothwell.

[1] The Mitchels travelled around the island with her husband, visiting fellow Irish exiles, becoming fond of William Smith O'Brien in particular.

They lived for a time in Brooklyn, New York from 1853 to 1855, rekindling friendships with old friends who were fellow Young Ireland exiles.

Mitchel feared that the isolation and life in a primitive log cabin would be detrimental to their children's education, and at her behest the family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee in September 1856.

[5] Mitchel accompanied her husband to Paris in September 1860, and in opposition to some of the family, she supported her daughter Henrietta's conversion to Catholicism and entrance into a convent.

She remained in Paris and Ireland with her daughters, while her husband and sons assisted the Confederacy during the American Civil War.

Without letting her husband know, Mitchel resolved to return to America when she heard of her youngest son, William's, death at Gettysburg in July 1863.

Due to lack of funding for the Irish-American press and her husband's ill health resulted in the family falling into poverty.