[citation needed] One of her Logan cousins was the Quaker poet Hannah Griffitts (aka "Fidelia"), one of the advocates for nonviolent protest but not independence, who had lived with Norris at her family's home for a time as a child.

[citation needed] Norris was well-educated and owned one of the largest libraries in the colonies at the time, holding approximately 1,500 books, as well as personal and real property, including the estate of Fair Hill in the Philadelphia area.

[citation needed] After her parents had died, when she was age 26, Norris ran the estate, either by herself or with her sister Sally, for a number of years.

[2] Norris was a participant in correspondence with Milcah Martha Moore, Hannah Griffitts, Samuel Fothergill, Patrick Henry, Susanna Wright,[3] Benjamin Franklin, and other politically and economically engaged men and women of the colonial era in Pennsylvania that was documented in Moore's book of that time.

[7] Although he declined to sign the Declaration of Independence, because he and those he represented in Pennsylvania believed it would lead to violence (they preferred civil disobedience and verbal protest) and the colonies were not ready to self-govern, he was named as the chair of the committee that drafted the Articles of Confederation, which he and others drafted around a concept of person rather than man as was used in the Declaration of Independence.

[8] He later enlisted in the Pennsylvania Militia as a private and later was named a brigadier general in the Continental Army, while Mary Norris continued to manage their property.

[13] Late in his life, John Dickinson wrote much about the need for education of youth in civic matters and Quaker thought for the health and stability of the new nation.

)[15] The Logan family diary record, written by a descendant of her maternal aunt, suggests the aunt and others sought transfer of some of Norris' real property, including Fair Hill, to Joseph Parker Norris at the time of the marriage or later, although there is no record that this transfer actually happened until possibly in 1790.