Mary Blount was born in Chowan County, North Carolina on 26 May 1735. The daughter of a prominent planter family, Mary may have met her future husband Charles Pettigrew while he served as Edenton's school master in the early 1770s or when he returned to Edenton in 1775 as an Anglican minister. As a member of a family of early Patriot supporters, Mary signed a nonimportation agreement in 1774 that later became known as the Edenton Tea Party Resolves. In 1778 she married Charles Pettigrew and the couple had two children together at their estate in Tyrrell County before she died during childbirth on 16 March 1786.