Mary was the daughter of the Revenant Henry King of Ballylin in Co Offaly. In 1854 she married Henry Ward who was later to become the fifth Viscount Bangor.

She was quite an exceptional woman taking a keen interest in astronomy in the natural world and was a pioneer in the use of the microscope, she used her cousins telescope in Birr Co Offaly which for 75 years was the largest telescope in the world (See Birr Co Offaly for pictures.)

She wrote two books one called Telescope Teachings and the other Microscope Teachings published in London in 1859, she met and corresponded with some of the most distinguished men of science of her day, and all this at a time when women were not expected to have and scientific let alone intellectual ability