Mary Jane Hancock was born June 18, 1844 in Meriweather Co., GA to Tommie and Bethany Hancock. She married John Doole abt 1867 in Hill County TX. Mary was with child when she and John and daughter Mandy arrived in the Chickasaw Nation at Courtney in the spring of 1869. They put in one crop and returned to Hill County in Nov when Jack was born. Mary returned to the Chickasaw Nation abt 1874-75 settling across from Spanish Fort. Separated from her husband, Mary and the two children lived with her sister Jo Cook in a small two room log cabin. They farmed and chopped firewood for hire.

Mary Doole married Dick young in Jan of 1877. Tragically Dick was killed in a gunfight with Green Cook in 1878. She then married an Irish immigrant John Downs in August, 1879.

They built a two room log cabin connected by an open breezeway with chimneys on either side. Rawhide stretched tightly across the windows provided a blurred view of the world outside. Children were born; Minnie 1881, Evie 1884, and Thomas 1889. Evie recalled, "We had work horses Buster and Goldust and a dog named Tig. Evie and her cousin Emma Cook would often ride horses, Emma with a beautiful brown mare and Evie on a dapple grey horse named Premium.

By 1900 the Downs family moved south of Courtney and about a mile west to an area with a small slough on the high bluff overlooking the Red River. Brother Groves lived in a large two story home on a hill known as the Preacher Place. The Downs share cropped and lived below this in a small wood framed tin roof house with a lean-to (The Mollie Beavers Place).

On May 4th in 1901 Mary was in their home at Courtney cooking dinner while her husband John and her children were hoeing in the fields. She came to the door and called out for them to come in and wash up for dinner. Evie recalled when they got to the house the table was set with dinner on. Mary lay motionless on the bed. She was buried at Spanish Fort.