Mary's parents have not been identified although her father was born in South Carolina and may have been named Arthur or John. Jane was the name of Mary's mother or stepmother. Mary was living in Macon by 1850 and had siblings named John, Alice, Newman, and Harriet. No connection has yet been proved to the Newman Bradleys of Liberty County, Georgia. In 1854 Mary married widower James Dunbar Van Valkenburgh (sometimes Van Valkenburg), a wealthy merchant and lumberman from New York. She helped rear his already large family and had five children of her own. James died in 1865 and Mary died two years later.