Ada Agnes Jane McElhenney was born in
Charleston, South Carolina in 1834. She grew up under the care of her maternal grandfather as part of an aristocratic Southern family, She moved to
New York City in 1854, took up acting, engaged in a widely publicized liaison with pianist and composer
Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and bore a son out of wedlock. she frequented
Pfaff's Cellar, where she met Henry Clapp, editor of the Saturday Press, an iconoclastic weekly magazine of the arts., Clare was devastated, and returned to acting in a provincial stock company. Clare suffered a dog bite from a Poodle in her theatrical agent's office and died from
rabies in 1874. Ada's writing for
the Saturday Press is included in The New York Saturday Press Omnibus Edition, published by funsub books in 2025. == See also ==