[1][2] She had a liberal education and traveled extensively in the U.S.,[5] having visited most places of note between the Canadian border and Texas.
In the literary weeklies of South Carolina before the war-especially The Examiner and The Courant, both published at the capital of the state-poems from her pen occasionally appeared.
[4] A few years before the civil war, Vance's poem, "Charity", went the rounds of the newspaper world in the U.S., credited to the London Journal.
The author who received this unusual and high though merited compliment, was then a teenager, Miss Sallie Ada Reedy, of Lexington, Mississippi.
Wood Davidson wrote thus:—[3] "There breathes in all her writings an impassioned devotion, intense and pure, with a simplicity tender and graceful.
Her genius is vigorous, and at the same time exquisitely feminine-looking down upon life's struggling waters from woman's headland of catholic charity.
"In 1865, about the close of the war, she married Mr. Vance (died December 1868), of Kentucky,[5] and resided in Lexington, Mississippi.