I have also just been sent a notice, from the New York Times of June 2, 1908, about the death of Francis Marion Bates' widow, Mrs. Frances Wren Bates. She died at the age of 59, in New York, so had obviously returned to the United States, with her two children, after the death of her husband in Australia, in 1879. They had been married in 1863, in Richmond. Frances Wren had also been an actress and they had met while performing together. So there may some substance to one of the accounts stating that Francis Marion Bates had continued acting during the war.