She contributed to various magazines and periodicals, and from 1883, was an editor of the Woman's Department of the National Tribune at Washington, D.C., a paper devoted to the interest of soldiers.

[4] Sherwood's memorial poem, Albert Sidney Johnston, was written at the invitation of the executive committee for the Unveiling Ceremonies of the General Albert Sidney Johnston Equestrian Statue, held under the auspices of the Army of the Tennessee Louisiana Division (Ex-Confederate) at New Orleans.

[citation needed] Helen Louisa Bostwick Bird and Alice Williams Brotherton were contemporary poets from Ohio.

One of the earliest recollections of the child is hearing them recount the ballads and lyrics of Scottish romance and adventure, which impressed upon her mind and cultivated her tastes for that style of poetry.

[citation needed] James Brownlee Sr. was the Laird of Torfoot, in the parish of Avondale, Lanarkshire, Scotland, and his grandson, James, was successor, by inheritance; but he chose America and emigrated from Scotland to the United States in 1828, and settled in Trumbull County, Ohio, and became associate judge of the third judicial district of which it was a part.

When he was the editor of the Canton, Ohio Daily News-Democrat, she learned everything in the line of newspaper work from typesetting to leader-writing.

She was one of the first members of the Washington Literary Club, and the Sorosis of New York City; she also served as vice-president for Ohio in the first call for a national congress of women.

The broad, liberal and delicate manner in which she responded to that significant honor in her poem at the unveiling of the equestrian statue of Albert Sidney Johnston, in New Orleans, Louisiana, elicited praise.

Sherwood received the following letter:[12] At the unveiling of the equestrian statue to General Albert Sidney Johnston, April 6, 1887, in the city of New Orleans, on the memorial day of the association of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, your poem, sent us from your Northern home, a graceful tribute to him and our heroic dead, was read to an appreciative and admiring throng.

As "Peace hath her victories no less than War", we join heart with hand in reciprocating the cordial and fraternal sentiments set in those sweet and stirring strains, in which a woman's true soul, giving all honor to the knightly men and the gallant deeds on either side, in that "Great war that made ambition virtue", commemorates in charming numbers our day of reunion when veterans of the Blue and the Gray met.