House remained active in public life in North Carolina after the war ended, as a "first class nuisance," in one newspaper's description.[5] In 1876, she attended a Democratic Convention in Raleigh,[6] and may have been allowed to vote for Zebulon Vance as a candidate for governor.[7] In this act, she may have been the first woman to vote in North Carolina.[4] She was welcomed onto the platform for Vance's inauguration the following year.[1] One news report noted, with some humorous exaggeration, that "it was with the greatest difficulty that she could be kept from riding in the Governor's lap during the procession."[8]
House was known for her proficient swearing.[9] She became a member of the Methodist church for the first time in about 1875.[10] She made a significant cash gift to the building of a Methodist church in Raleigh. She lived her last years in a cottage, bought for her by Confederate veterans in recognition of her service on their behalf.[7] She was unsuccessful in her efforts to gain a pension for her wartime contributions, but she met with novelist E. D. E. N. Southworth during her 1879 visit to Washington D. C.[11]
She died in late 1881, in her eighties.[12] An acquaintance remarked many years later, "until she died in 1881, there were few women in North Carolina better known."[9]
