John Tyler, tenth president of the United States, was born in Charles City County, Virginia in 1790, the son of John and Mary Armistead Tyler. Admitted to the Virginia bar in 1809, Tyler established a practice in his native county. He was elected the the Virginia House of Delegates in 1811. In 1813 he married Letitia Christian (also born in 1790), and the couple would have eight children. Elected to Congress in 1816, Tyler served until 1821, then returned to the Virginia House of Delegates, then was elected Virginia governor in 1824, then served in the U. S. Senate from 1827 until 1836, when he resigned. Elected vice-president as William Henry Harrison's running mate in 1840, Tyler became president soon after taking office, following Harrison's death on April 4, 1841. Letitia Christian Tyler died the following year, and in 1844, Tyler married Julia Gardiner, making her First Lady of the United States. John Tyler died in 1862.

Born on Gardiner's Island, New York in 1820, Julia was the daughter of David and Juliana McLachlan-Gardiner. Together, the John and Julia Gardiner Tyler had seven children: David, John, Julia, Lachlan, Lyon, Robert and Pearl. After Tyler's presidency, the couple moved to Sherwood Forest, their Charles City County estate. Following President Tyler's death, Julia Tyler moved to Staten Island, New York, though her sympathies lay with the Confederacy. In the 1870s, she returned to Virginia, her finances largely depleted, and lived with the aid of her children. She died in Richmond in 1872.

Pearl Tyler, the youngest child of John and Julia Gardiner Tyler, was born on June 20, 1860. She married William Munford Ellis, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, in 1884. Born in Richmond in 1846, Ellis was the son of Powhatan Lewis Ellis and Elvira Henry Munford. His father died while Ellis was still a boy, and he moved with his mother and stepfather, Howard Peyton, to Montgomery County, Virginia in 1853. In 1864, William Ellis enlisted in the 4th Regiment, Virginia Reserves at Christiansburg, Virginia. He was elected second lieutenant in Company A in early 1864 and later appointed adjutant. Ellis first married, in 1870, Margaret Kent Langhorne, with whom he had four children before she died in 1882. Married in 1884, William and Pearl Tyler Ellis lived for many years in the Shawsville, Virginia area and had eight children: Pearl, John, Leila, Cornelia, Gardiner, William, Julia, and Lyon. Pearl Tyler Ellis served in the U. S. Army Nurse Corps during World War I and World War II, eventually attaning the rank of lieutenant colonel. Pearl Tyler Ellis died in Richmond in 1947; William Mumford Ellis had died in 1921.

Among the children of William and Pearl Tyler Ellis was Leila MacLachlan Ellis (1888-1968). She married Ambrose Madison Marye (1887-1972). The couple lived in the Shawsville, Virginia area. Ambrose Marye was the son of Alfred J. Marye and Nancy A. Anderson, whose brother, William G. Anderson, had served as a major in the 54th Virginia Infantry.