Mary Elizabeth Jenkins was born in May or June of 1823 near Waterloo, Maryland. She had two brothers. Her father died when she was two years old. Mary was then enrolled at a private girl’s boarding school, Academy for Young Ladies, in Alexandria Virginia.
She married John Harrison Surratt in 1839, when she was sixteen and he was twenty-seven. The couple lived on lands that John had inherited from his foster parents, the Neales, in what is now a section of Washington DC known as Congress Heights. They had three children.
In 1851, a fire destroyed their home. The couple bought a farm and established a tavern and later a post office. The tavern was in operation by the fall of 1852, and by 1853 the family was living in the newly-built Surratt House and Tavern.
