Mary Elizabeth Lewis was born around 1843 in Connecticut. She married Courtland George Stanton around 1862, and they had at least two children: Jennie, born around 1870; and Lewis, born around 1880. Stanton served in the Union army from 1862 until 1865. They corresponded throughout the war, and her letters expressed her strong love for her new husband. "I hardly know what to write," she declared in October 1862, "except to repeat the old story that I love you, I love you, yes, but that don't half express it. I cannot tell you how dear you are to me. Oh but if you were only here I'd show you."
During the war, she filled her time by attending church and local lyceum meetings. Although she claimed not to "know anything about politics," she paid close attention to the election of 1864. She insisted that "all good Christian men, and respectable citizens" supported the Republican Party, and she "never heard of a decent man who would vote on a copperhead ticket." In April 1865, she declared the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln "the worst thing that has happened to this nation in a long time." She denounced Confederates as "devils," and she insisted that the "north [was] too easy with the south."
The family moved to Westerly, Rhode Island, by 1880, and Mary died there sometime in the 1880s.