Mary Ann, nee Ellett, was born 15 Dec 1805 in Goochland County, Virginia, the 6th of 10 children of Benjamin and Mary (nee Anderson) Ellett. Her parents are buried in Virginia.

In 1835 her husband, brother Thomas and William Toler (who would marry her niece Mariah Taliaferro) went to what was then Warren County (Henderson County was split off in 1841), Illinois for the purpose of selecting a new home; in June 1836 the Coghills moved there. Her brothers Thomas and Benjamin also emigrated to Warren/Henderson County, and her oldest sister, Cecelia Agnes (married to Robert Brooke Taliaferro) followed soon after. The move was necessitated, in part, from their tobacco plantations being "played out" and their financial assets greatly dwindling. The Coghills and Elletts were truly pioneering families in Warren county (which was split off into Henderson county) and undoubtedly suffered all the hardships that came with this style of life.

While still in Virginia, her first son, Benjamin Jr was born in 1835. Her husband had previously been married to her cousin, Millicent Ellett and they had two children: John Waller and Millicent. Thus, Mary Ann became their mother also. After moving to Illinois, 8 other children were born: Mary K. aka Mollie, William H, Edwin, Frances aka Fannie, Richard Judson, Cornelius, Cornelia, Martha Ann, and Joseph. Several children died before reaching adulthood: Benjamin died at the age of 16; William died at the age of 9; Edwin at the age of 2; and Cornelius and Cornelia on the same day in 1847, Cornelius being not quite two and Cornelia about two weeks. Mollie, who married Alexander Hall, died at the age of twenty after her marriage to Alexander Hall.
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Additional notation: Through (her and) her husband, (both Virginians), The Coghill Cemetery, Oquawka, Illinois, is on land granted to Benjamin Coleman Coghill by President Martin Van Buren in 1840.

Source:
Coghill, William Coghill, The Family of Coghill Continued, A Supplement to and Continuation of "The Family of Coghill," By James Henry Coghill, (The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1879), and Setting Forth the Genealogy of the Coghill Family. The Dietz Press, Incorporated, Richmond, Virginia, Copyright © 1956, by Will H. Coghill, Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018. p. 69-70.
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Per the newspaper article attached to her husband's Find a Grave memorial, it appears that she was initially buried in the Taliaferro/Toler family farm burying ground.