Oceana was born in September 1885, probably in New York City, to Caroline Belle Wardlaw (1848–1913), and Colonel Robert Maxwell Martin, who had fought for the Confederacy in the American Civil War.

John Banks Wardlaw (1854–1881) who was a journalist and also taught at the Christiansburg school with his aunt and sisters and married Mary Elizabeth "Lizzie" Davidson (1857–1880).

The second brother was Albert Goodall Wardlaw (1856–1936), a reverend who married Harriett Lee Field; he wasn't involved with the school.

Vashti moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma by 1920; by 1930 she was living in West Palm Beach, Florida with her son.

Virginia's younger sister, Bessie Spindle, was already living in the area with her husband, Richard, a prominent local businessman, and in 1900 was the Principal at the Academy.

Around this time, Mrs. Pollock, aged and infirm, deeded the school to her sister, Martha Wardlaw and niece Virginia.

Virginia and Mary had inherited the real property of their father, and mother Martha had received all the cash, so there was money to apply to the school.

She made sudden changes to the curriculum, moved students from one classroom to another for no apparent reason, and instilled suspicion and secrecy by installing up to three padlocks on some doors.

Fletcher and John moved to Lynnville, Tennessee, opening a sawmill together and courting the women who would become their wives in a double wedding, both daughters of a prominent local lawyer named J. R. McLaurin.

This time, Virginia Wardlaw raised the alarm and subsequently explained the accident—John had been taking measurements to provide a water supply for the school.

The three sisters insisted it was an accident, not a suicide, and eventually received an insurance settlement in the amount of $12,000 (equivalent to $406,933 in 2023).

While John's last months were playing out, Caroline traveled to Lynnville and insisted that Fletcher accompany her to Louisville concerning some family property.

The three sisters entered into several fraudulent business deals in Christiansburg and the surrounding communities, eroding any trust the residents of that area had in them and sparking much speculation about their habits.

Rumors spread in town that the sisters were engaged in secret rituals at Christiansburg's Sunset Cemetery, around the graves of their brother John and his wife Lizzie.

Vandals wreaked extensive damage on the school and, by 1908, all three sisters, along with Fletcher and Ocey Snead, left Christiansburg for New York City and New Jersey.

For some unknown reason, after the death of their first child, and while Ocey was early in her pregnancy with their second, Fletcher Snead moved to Canada under an assumed name, and never contacted his wife again, but left her in the care of these women.

Ocey had apparently always been the object of scorn from her mother and aunts, who deliberately tried to starve her to death virtually from the day she was born.

Pettit visited the Wardlaw household several times and repeatedly found that his instructions for Ocey's care were not being followed.

When Pettit returned to check on Ocey before he reported the strange case to police, he found the place abandoned and the sisters gone.

The family next surfaced in another Brooklyn neighborhood in September 1909, when Virginia, wearing a thick layer of black veils, visited Julius Carabba, a New York attorney, and asked him to help a dying woman prepare a will.

Carabba offered to write them a check and, while the sisters left the room in search of a pen, talked to Ocey.

Virginia led Dr. Herbert M. Simmons, the Assistant County Physician, to an upstairs bathroom where Ocey's naked body was sitting in a tub of water with her head tilted under the faucet.

My sorrow and pain in this world are greater than I can endure.Ocey was buried on December 7, 1909, at Mount Hope Cemetery, beside her father, 7-year-old brother, and 2-day-old infant daughter Mary Alberta, in Hastings-on-Hudson in Westchester County, New York.

Her infant son, David Pollock Snead, who had been taken by the sisters shortly after birth and placed in an orphange, died July 18, 1910, at the age of 9 months, and is buried with his family.

Simmons deemed Virginia's answers to questions about Ocey's death suspicious, so he called the police to investigate.

Caroline Martin, late into her trial, finally pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was taken to jail, then transferred to an insane asylum, where she died in 1913.