Jeannette Ritchie Hadermann was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 22, 1837. Her mother was Matilda Norman and her father was Charles Julius Hadermann von Winsingen, a German baron and political exile, of Bonn, Prussia. Walworth, who had been carefully educated, became a governess at the age of sixteen. On December 9, 1873, she married the widower, Major Douglas Walworth, a prominent Southern editor. They lived for a time on his plantation in southern Mississippi, and then moved to Memphis, Tennessee, and finally to New York City. After being widowed in 1915, she moved from New York to New Orleans, Louisiana to live with relatives.
Walworth contributed many stories to newspapers and periodicals. While writing for the Commercial Appeal, she used the pen name, "Mother Goose", and she also was known by the pen name of "Ann Atom". Before marriage, she published: Forgiven at Last (Philadelphia, 1870); The Silent Witness (1871); Dead Men's Shoes (1872). After marriage, her works included: Heavy Yokes (Boston, 1874); Nobody's Business (New York, 1878); The Bar Sinister (1885); Without Blemish (1885); Alice and Scruples (1886); At Bay (New York, 1887); The New Man at Rossmere (1887); Southern Silhouettes (New York, 1887); True to Herself (New York, 1888); That Girl from Texas (New York, 1888); Splendid Egotist (1889); and The Little Radical (1890).