Family tradition says that Mary was the daughter of a "full blood Cherokee" woman. Born around 1883 in Cabell County, West Virginia, to William Horton, second husband of Octavia, and Octavia Egnor, Mary grew up with her brothers and sisters: Martha Jane, Celia, Willie, Beulah, Balam, Benjamin Harrison, Sylvester, Eva Belle, Lillie, Allen and Albert. Her siblings were children of her mother Octavia, her father William, her mother's previous husband, Floyd Smith, and her stepfathers, James Calloway Plumley, James Sadler, and a man we know only as Mr. Sutliff.

Mary's Native American heritage has never been documented or clarified. Up until recent times, it was often very dangerous to be identified as being Indian or having native blood. Familiies and entire communities found it necessary to move many times, to change their names many times, and to blend with white, black, and Mexican societies and families. Such migration and hiding of their heritage allowed them to remain closer to their extended families, and to avoid being forced to remove along the "Trail of Tears" to reservations in the Oklahoma Territory. Many who failed to evade this journey, died along the way...as well as many who were discovered to have hidden out in order to remain in the eastern areas their families had enjoyed for millennia. It was very common for families to deny, even to their own families, the native heritage they held so dear...with so many memories of a gentle, trusting and caring way of life. Eventually, many people were able to return from Oklahoma, from Canada, from neighboring states and wilderness areas to reunite generations later...but so much had been lost. We can be glad that this culture is not altogether vanished, and that good people, such as our own family, have preserved many of the practices of goodness, family and relating to the land, this heritage has shared with us.

Mary's mother, Octavia Egnor's roots extend in many directions, linking us to Virginia before West Virginia was a state, to Maryland, to Pennsylvania, to North Carolina, and to England, Germany and Switzerland.

Surnames of her ancestors include: EGNOR, AGNER, EIGENDER, AEGENDER, MAHN, FULLER, MASSEY, MASSIE, STRONG, MEADOWS, PLUMLEY, SMITH, KAYLOR, CAMPBELL, LEWIS, CHETER, RICHMOND, and SOWARDS, with her earliest known ancestors, John Plumley and El Brown, born around 1600.