As her mother's only heir, she eventually inherited large tracts of land amassed by her maternal grandfather, Gen. James O'Hara.

[1] While in boarding school in Staten Island, New York, at the age of 15, she met and fell in love with 43-year-old Captain Edward Wyndham Harrington Schenley of the British Army, and eloped to England.

The ensuing scandal sparked coverage in many American newspapers, and was referred to as "the greatest romance in Pittsburg's early history" in her New York Times obituary.

He demanded that the federal government in Washington, DC intercept the ship and that the Pennsylvania General Assembly in Harrisburg take action.

Schenley was absent from his post as Her Majesty's Commissioner of Arbitration in a mixed court for the suppression of the slave trade in British Guiana.

In 1859, her husband became a Member of Parliament for Dartmouth, but three months later was unseated after an election petition committee found his win had been secured through bribery and corruption.