Life was not kind to Nancy in her old age. In 1870 she is living in the home of her son Edward, along with her husband Pompey. But ten years later Pompey is a domestic servant living with a local family and Nancy is living with three other elderly ladies in the household of R. Dwight Andreus as a “boarder.” This relationship becomes clearer in the 1883 Sheffield Annual Report by Town Officers, where Nancy’s name is found in a list of “Names of Paupers Supported at R. D. Andreus,” evidently a poorhouse funded, at least in part, by the Town. Just three years later things have gone from bad to worse because the 1886 Sheffield Annual Report lists expenditures on behalf of Sheffield paupers including the payment of $6.00 to “George Fuller, for finding and burying Mrs. Penfield.”