With her widowed mother, she settled at 2020 Hearst Avenue (then College Way), in a house with a watermill in the rear yard.
[1][2] In 1886, when she was 24 years old, May founded Cheney's Pacific Coast Bureau of Education in San Francisco.
The eldest, Charles Henry Cheney (1884–1943), earned the first architectural degree awarded by UC before continuing his studies in Paris, eventually becoming a notable city planner and zoning expert.
His son, Warren DeWitt Cheney (1907-1979), was a well-known sculptor and art teacher who took up psychology in midlife, founding the Transactional Analysis Journal.
[4] Sheldon Warren Cheney (1886–1980), entered his father's real estate business before moving to Detroit, where he became a notable author and art critic.
[1][2] At the end of 1939, May Cheney sold her two campus houses to the university, and the family soon moved to 116 Tunnel Road.
[1][2] In choosing a permanent home we seek that place above all others which promises abundance of life, stimulus, interests that postpone as long as possible the inevitable apathy of old age.
[5]On August 4, 1919, Cheney was shot at by Roger Sprague, a chemistry assistant who was despondent at not being recommended for further advancement.