Mary Jenkins met John Harrison Surratt in 1839, when she was 16 or 19 and he was 26. His family had settled in Maryland in the late 1600s. An orphan, he was adopted by Richard and Sarah Neale of Washington, D.C., a wealthy couple who owned a farm. The Neales divided their farm among their children, and Surratt inherited a portion of it. His background has been described by historian Kate Clifford Larson as "questionable", and he had fathered at least one child out of wedlock. They wed in August 1840. John converted to Roman Catholicism prior to the marriage, and the couple may have wed at a Catholic church in Washington, D.C. John purchased a mill in Oxon Hill, Maryland, and the couple moved there. The Surratts had three children over the next few years: Isaac (born June 2, 1841), Elizabeth Susanna (nicknamed "Anna", born January 1, 1843), and John, Jr. (born April 1844).