[1] Her four sisters included Elizabeth and the writer Jean Collace.
[2] When she was about fourteen she was converted by the eventual martyr Hugh Mackail who was then the minister at Trinity in Edinburgh.
Her husband died in 1674 and she and her sister Jean moved to Fife and the village of Falkland.
The two of them became schoolmistresses nominally teaching needlework to the children of the local gentry, but it is speculated that they were also providing religious guidance.
In 1735 her "Memoirs or spiritual exercises" were arranged to be formally published by the minister James Hog,[1] although there are three manuscript copies extant which show that her writings were distributed before this.