Maryetta Rowe was the second of four children born to Steven G. Rowe and Ruth Elizabeth Collins Rowe in Ithaca,Tompkins, New York. Her family moved to Bonaparte, Iowa where her father died in 1842. The family then moved to Nauvoo, Illinois where she married Hyrum Gates in 1846
The Durfee family living in Kirtland had escaped the early period of dire persecution in Missouri. But in the Spring of 1837, they decided to join the saints in Missouri.