Mary Dulhanty was born in Springhill, Nova Scotia in 1909, the daughter of Richard and Hannah Dulhanty. She moved with her family to Bridgewater in 1912. Her father died in 1923. Mary had two sisters, Jane (b. 1900) and Margaret (b. 1903), and a brother Frank (b. 1906). Mary graduated from Mount Saint Vincent in June 1927, and emigrated with her mother to New York in 1929. She married William Swift on 11 June 1932, and was divorced in 1936, reconciled, then divorced again in 1938. She followed her sister Jane from California then to Hawaii where she worked for a general contractor. Mary was in Pearl Harbor when it was bombed by the Japanese in 1941. Shortly after she married Alexander Kirkland McKendrick (1916-1968), and they had two children, Mary Elizabeth, called Beth (b. 1942) and James (Jim, b. 1944) and the family spent most of their time in Belmont, California. Mary died 29 April 1999.