Although her father was a nondenominational Protestant and her mother Episcopalian, Surratt was enrolled in a private Roman Catholic girls' boarding school, the Academy for Young Ladies in Alexandria, Virginia, on November 25, 1835. Mary's maternal aunt, Sarah Latham Webster, was a Catholic, which may have influenced where she was sent to school. Within two years, Mary converted to Roman Catholicism and adopted the baptismal name of Maria Eugenia. She stayed at the Academy for Young Ladies for four years, leaving in 1839, when the school closed. She remained an observant Catholic for the rest of her life.