Mary Bailey Yarborough was born in Virginia in about 1758. A resident of Brunswick County, Virginia, she and her siblings saw her brother go off to war as a member of the Continental Army and had to plow her family's fields in her brother's absence. She married Randolph Yarborough on March 28, 1781 and soon after resided in Halifax, North Carolina, where the couple had at least four children together. After her husband was shot through the chest during the Battle of Halifax in early May 1781, she helped nurse him back to health. He recovered and continued to serve in the local militia during the remainder of the Revolutionary War. They then moved to Kentucky, where her husband died in 1804. Mary never remarried and she applied unsuccessfully for a widow's pension on account of her husband's military service. She died in Morgan County, Kentucky in February 1849.