The proverb "she looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness," was true of her. That "cleanliness was next to godliness" seemed moulded into her very life and character, and through a long and busy life she adhered tenaciously to a strictly systematic method, in all her household duties and the late members of her family were trained to the same degree of system and tidiness. Yet while keeping an incessant warfare with dirt, the proverbs were equally true of her. "She seeketh wool and flax and she layeth her hands to the spindle." With this and the ample time she found to ply her needle, she was constantly adding to the coffers of her home. In her teens she suffered the loss of a beloved mother, over whom she had watched with a daughter's anxious care, during a sickness of many long months. After this bereavement their troubles came not singly, their property as being swallowed up by creditors, and she unhesitatingly left the parental roof and commenced the life of a domestic, first in her own neighborhood and town, and afterward in Watertown, Mass., serving early and late for the pittance of one dollar per week; yet from this scanty allowance she managed to save a sum sufficient to redeem their home and an acre of land, which furnished a home for her father in his declining years, and won for herself a reputation for faithfulness and filial esteem (Severance, B. Frank. Genealogy and biography of the descendants of Walter Stewart of Scotland and of John Stewart who came to America in 1718 and settled in Londonderry, N.H. Greenfield, Mass. : T. Morey & Son, 1905, pg. 108-109).