[1] The Holmes family was enslaved to farmer Nathaniel Ford, who received them while in office as sheriff of Howard County in Missouri.

[2] In 1844, Ford moved both his and the Holmes family, including Robin, Polly, the three-year-old Mary Jane, and the younger James and Roxanna, to Oregon, despite the territorial ban on slavery, promising to free them once their affairs were settled.

[3] Mary Jane Holmes chose to remain with the Ford family, acting as a servant for a further four years in order to provide income for her parents, who had taken their other children, and moved to Marion County, where they owned a successful plant nursery.

[3] In 1857, when she was sixteen and wanted to marry, Ford demanded that the groom, Reuben Shipley (or Reuben Ficklin, depending on the source[6]), pay him seven hundred and fifty dollars to be able wed Mary Jane, even though she had been legally released from his ownership by the Territorial Supreme Court four years earlier.

Ruben and Mary Jane married and later bought an 80-acre (32 ha) farm near Corvallis, Oregon.