Mary America Schrimsher Rogers, wife of Clem Rogers and mother of Will Rogers, was born on 9 October 1839 on the Schrimsher family plantation south west of Tahlequah. She attended and graduated from the Cherokee Female Seminary in Tahlequah, while also briefly attending the Academy at Cane Hill in Alabama. She had met Clem Rogers through her brother, John Gunter Schrimsher, who both had attended the Cherokee Male Seminary together in Tahlequah, and who both would establish ranches and settle in the Cooweescoowee District. Mary and Clem were married in 1858.
Will Rogers took after his mother in many ways. Mary Rogers was energetic, had a warm sense of humor, and a shape wit. She was good host who loved to sing and play the family piano in the parlor of their ranch home.
Life in the Cooweescoowee District was difficult. Mary had lost her first home during the Civil War, lived as a refugee for the majority of the war, and lost three children in infancy and another in adolescence. And, Mary herself passed away in 1890, at only fifty years of age.