After that incident, Barnell was placed in the care of her Catawban grandmother who lived in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. She began to shave in order to conceal her condition. Her grandmother told her stories about Florence Nightingale, which inspired her to work as a student nurse in the old city hospital at Wilmington when she turned 17. She worked there for about a year until an unpleasant incident occurred that made her believe she would never have a normal life. She returned to her grandmother's farm. In spring 1892 she met a circus performer named Professor William Heckler who talked her into stopping shaving and got her employment with John Robinson’s Circus. She tried several stage names before eventually settling on Lady Olga Roderick. At that time her beard was 13 inches long. She went back to North Carolina every winter until her grandmother died in 1899. She worked with the Robinson circus for fourteen years.