Mary Ryan was born in about 1710 and was a resident of Bertie County, North Carolina. She married Richard Lakey, a joiner, by 1734. In 1742 she testified in a case before the North Carolina Colonial Court regarding Scipio, an enslaved man that had run away to Benjamin Hill's home. As the Lakeys later sold a parcel of land to John Campbell, Hill's son-in-law, it's quite possible that the Lakeys were near neighbors to the Hills. The Lakeys later resided in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, where Mary survived her husband's death in 1777.