Miss Sneyd had been the object of attention from Thomas Day, but her views on marriage were not submissive enough to please him. She had other suitors, among them the unfortunate Major André. She married Edgeworth (July 1773), and after residing at Edgeworthstown for three years, they settled at Northchurch, in Hertfordshire. After six years of domestic happiness, Honora Edgeworth died (April 1780), recommending her husband to marry her sister Elizabeth; and they were actually married on Christmas Day, 1780. In 1782 Edgeworth returned to Ireland, determined to improve his estate, educate his seven children, and ameliorate the condition of the tenants. Up to this point Edgeworth has told his own story in his _Memoirs_. The rest of his life is written by his daughter, who opens with a lengthy panegyric on her father as a model landlord (_Memoirs_, ii. 12-36). In 1785 he was associated with others in founding the Royal Irish Academy; and, during the two succeeding years, mechanics and agriculture occupied most of his time. In October 1789 his friend Day was killed by a fall from his horse, and this trial was soon followed by the loss of his daughter Honora, who had just reached her fifteenth year. In 1792 the health of one of Edgeworth's sons took him to Clifton, where he remained with his family for about two years, returning in 1794 to Edgeworthstown. Ireland was, at that time, harassed by internal disturbances, and threats of a French invasion, and Edgeworth offered to establish telegraphic communication of his own invention throughout the country. This offer was declined. A full account of the matter is given in Edgeworth's _Letter to Lord Charlemont on the Telegraph_; and his apparatus is explained in an "Essay on the art of Conveying Swift and Secret Intelligence," published in the sixth volume of the _Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_. In the autumn of 1797 the third Mrs Edgeworth died.