Mary H. Fish (maiden name: Barrett) was born around March 1818 in Boston, Massachusetts, to Samuel Barrett and Ann Norris. She married John Blaney Fish on January 17, 1836, and they had at least seven children: John, born around 1839; Martha, born around 1841; William, born on January 15, 1843; Charles, born around 1845; Henry, born around 1849; Albert, born around 1850; and Sumner, born around 1857.
They lived in Lowell, Massachusetts, and her husband worked as an iron founder. They moved to Manchester, New Hampshire, in the 1850s, and then to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the 1860s. Her died of consumption in Cambridge on October 25, 1875. She remained in Cambridge, and by 1880, she was living with three of her adult children. By 1900, she was living in her son Albert’s household. She died of “Sepsis from Burns” in Malden, Massachusetts, on September 30, 1905.