Mary Emma Isham was born on March 23, 1843, in Underhill, Vermont, to Franklin and Rebecca Isham. Her father was a farmer who owned $2,000 of real estate and $200 of personal property by 1860. She grew up and attended school in Williston, Vermont, and by the late 1860s, she was living in Douglas, Massachusetts. She married Albert Hamilton Marsh on September 25, 1869. They had two children: Franklin, born around 1870; and Mildred, born around 1875.
Her husband worked as an “axe temperer” in Douglas, and by 1870, they owned $350 of personal property. They moved to Bennington, Kansas, in the 1870s and then to Highgate, Vermont, in the late 1800s. She died there of pancreatic cancer on October 28, 1918.