On the death of her husband, Charles Davenport Adsit, of Buffalo, New York in 1873, she assumed the entire charge of his business and general insurance agency.

For many years, she delivered these lectures in the principal cities of the U.S., and her name was prominently connected with art education both in the U.S. and abroad.

Her early life was a discipline in self-dependence, which aided and stimulated the development of an inherited force of character, enabling her to combat and conquer adverse conditions, overcome obstacles and from childhood mark out for herself and pursue steadily a career that achieved success.

[3] Adsit was a regular contributor to the columns of the New York City Baptist Register, the Boston Recorder, the New-York Tribune and the Western Literary Messenger.

The series was completed, however, and her identity was held between herself and the editor, and not until many years later, by her own voluntary confession, was the writer identified.

Finding no satisfactory data for thorough investigation in books, she visited the studios of artists, as well as the workshops of engravers, gathering firsthand the necessary information, even to the practical use of the tools of each craft.

[3] Months before the articles were completed the demand for parlor conversation on the topics which so absorbed her induced Adsit to open her home to groups of ladies and gentlemen, who cared to take up the study in earnest.

The secret of her success lay in the fact that her work was simply the expression of her own personality, including an abounding enthusiasm which carried her audiences.

Her own adverse experiences quickened and enlarged her sympathies toward all working women, to whom she gave not only wholesome advice, but also substantial aid.