During a temporary residence in Memphis, she edited The Voice of Truth, a journal devoted to the interests of spiritualism and reform.

Selecting some of the most popular airs, she added poems to them, a result of her own sorrow and domestic bereavement; music thus immortalized her verse.

Benjamin M. Palmer, an author himself, was a noted divine and pastor of the Independent Presbyterian church at Beaufort when Shindler was born.

In 1814, her parents removed to Charleston, South Carolina, her father having been called to the charge of the Independent Presbyterian church in that city.

Her father's congregation consisted principally of planters of the neighbourhood, who spent their summers in the city, and their winters upon their plantations.

“I well remember the delight with which we children used to anticipate our spring and Christmas holidays, which we were sure to spend upon some neighbouring plantation, released from all our city trammels, running perfectly wild, as all city children were expected to do, contracting sudden and violent intimacies in all the negro houses about Easter and Christmas times, that we might have a store of eggs for sundry purposes, for which we gave in exchange the most gaudy cotton handkerchiefs that could be bought in Charleston.

It was during these delightful rural visits that what little poetry I have in my nature was fostered and developed, and at an early age I became sensible of a something within me which often brought tears into my eyes when I could not, for the life of me, express my feelings.

The darkness and loneliness of our vast forests filled me with indescribable emotions, and above all other sounds, the music of the thousand Eolian harps sighing and wailing through a forest of pines, was most affecting to my youthful heart.”In Charleston, she was educated by the Misses Ramsay, the daughters of Dr. David Ramsay, the historian,[5] and granddaughters, on the maternal side, of John Laurens, who figured conspicuously in the early history of the American Revolution.

[6] Before marriage, Shindler had written considerably for the Rose-Bud, a juvenile periodical published in Charleston by Mrs. Caroline Howard Gilman.

In the fall of 1838, accompanied by her parents, the young couple and their son removed to the West, spending the winter in Cincinnati, and, as soon as the river rose in the spring, they moved on to New Orleans.

While in that city, a letter was received from Alabama that Shindler's only brother, who was a physician, was in Greene county, sick, and failing rapidly.

To wean her from her sorrows, her parents encouraged her to continue the practice, and this was the origin of the first work she published, The Southern Harp.

[6] Her next publication was a prose work, entitled Charles Morton; or, the Young Patriot, a tale of the American Revolution.

Her views on the subject of the Trinity also experienced a change, reverting to their original form, and putting her in communion with the church of her husband.