Martha E. Fearn was born on August 20, 1845, in Milton, Kentucky, to Samuel and Elizabeth Fearn. Her father was a farmer who owned $38,600 of real estate and $7,890 of personal property by 1860. She grew up in Trimble County, Kentucky, and she married James Bell Jordan in the 1860s. They had at least two children: Samuel, born around 1868; and Catherine, born around 1869. They lived in Milton, Kentucky, and her husband worked as a farmer. They moved to Volusia County, Florida, in the 1870s, and her husband died around 1899. By 1900, she was living in her son Samuel’s household in DeLand, Florida. She died in DeLand on December 14, 1936.