Her parents were Mary Ann (born Raven) and the Reverend Charles Grenfell Nicolay.

[2] Mary was educated in Bristol at the Clifton High School where she became a pupil teacher.

In the following year her mother gathered the family together to go to Australia to be reunited with the Reverend Nicolay.

[3] Her father wrote, and he founded the Western Australian Museum[2] and he left her his money, when he died in 1897, and she had a small hospital in Perth.

[5] She continued to read about the latest ideas each week and she published several reminiswnces which are said to be embellished.