When her father died in 1849 at age 69, the farm was sold and she "sought employment as a designer of print goods" at the Manchester Mills company in Massachusetts.

Baron Gustav Adolph von Olnhausen (born in 1809)[3] left Saxony after the German revolutions of 1848–1849 and also due to financial troubles, which led him to sell of his property.

With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, she volunteered to serve as a nurse with the Prussian Army and was accepted on the basis of being the Baroness von Olnhausen.

In 2015, the PBS Masterpiece Theatre produced Mercy Street, a fictional mini series portraying life in the Mansion House Hospital where Phinney was stationed.

[1] The show relied heavily on her diaries and portrays Phinney as the lead character, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead.