A native of Pineville, SC, Peyre's second marriage in 1830 to John C. Dinnies led to her settling in St. Louis. (Her first marriage was to a man named Shackelford, otherwise unidentified.) It was after her marriage to Dinnies that she began to publish her poetry, under the pen-name "Moina." She was a fiction writer as well as poet, and much of her work appeared in Sarah Josepha Hale's Lady's Book and in the Southern Literary Messenger. A collection of 100 poems, The Floral Year, appeared in 1845 (some sources indicate 1847).
--Sharon M. Harris