Maria was about six and a half years of age when her mother died and it is said that her father arranged for her and her two sisters to be boarded in September 1784, at the then very newly established academy called Baron House, at Mitcham.³ Baron House came into the ownership of a Mr James Dempster at about that time and over the years he built it up to become a well-known boy's school.⁴ It is surprising, therefore, that the academy accepted girls as pupils though it might have done so in its early days when it was getting established. Whatever the case may be, Maria and her sisters were looked after and educated suitably at some establishment while their peripatetic father attended to his business and literary interests at home and abroad.

From their father's lifestyle, it does not appear that Maria and her two sisters had much family life or, indeed, a stable family home even when they were adult enough to look after themselves. Moreover, like many children of that period they had few older relatives they could turn to. They may well have had support from some of their mother's siblings in London but otherwise they had no other direct family this side of the Atlantic.
  
Sadly, no family papers have survived to shed any light on Maria's life once her education had finished. As the eldest daughter, one might expect her to have taken charge the Bancroft household wherever it was then residing but that does not seem to have been the case in 1802 when she and her sisters are reported to be living in the city of Gloucester.⁵ Also, no evidence has been found to explain how she and Catherine survived financially following their father's death as, by then, he was said to be insolvent and they would have got nothing from his estate.

In addition, nothing has been discovered to explain why Maria and her sister Catherine went to live in Coblenz in the summer of 1838 as there is no obvious family connection with that town.⁶  However, the fact that they did go there suggests that there must have been a strong imperative. Why else leave England and their propinquity to family members - their sister at Iden and niece in London and, doubtless, several friends from their days in Margate?
 
Perhaps the answer lies in Maria's health. By the 1830s, German pre-eminence in medical matters was widely recognised and it may be that they went to Coblenz to seek treatment of some chronic ailment and settled there. Certainly, in her letter to her nephew William Bancroft from Coblenz in February 1852, Catherine writes at length about Maria's ill-health and mentions that she is a patient of a "Dr Settigast"⁷ and there was, indeed, an eminent physician in Coblenz at that time with a very similar name, one Dr Settegast, who could well have been the doctor Catherine mentions. Whatever the case may be, Maria and Catherine remained in Coblenz until Maria died in January 1853.

There is every likelihood that Maria's nephew William Bancroft went to live with them in Coblenz for a year or two because his daughter Edith writes that he was educated in Germany and from surviving family correspondence it is clear that he formed a close relationship with his aunts.⁸ Maria and Catherine came back to England on visits to various members of the family from time to time - in one letter her sister Catherine writes "… we had to come abroad again with all its risques[sic]…", presumably, she was referring to the risks of the journey back to Germany.

How Maria and Catherine managed financially remains a mystery. Any Will Maria might have made is inaccessible and Catherine died leaving between £400 and £450 so they must have inherited a little capital or acquired it through family largesse.