Born in Knox County Ohio, July 19, 1817. Mary Ann Ball grew up in the houses of various relatives.

She attended Oberlin College and later studied nursing. In 1847 she married a widower, Robert Bickerdyke, who died in 1859.

Soon after the outbreak of the Civil War she volunteered to accompany and distribute a collection of supplies taken up for the relief of wounded soldiers at a makeshift army hospital in Illinois

On her arrival there she found conditions to be extremely unsanitary, and she set to work immediately at cleaning, cooking, and nursing. She became matron when a general hospital was organized there in November 1861.

Having scavenged supplies and equipment and established mobile laundries and kitchens, Bickerdyke had generally endeared herself to the wounded and sick, among whom she became known as "Mother" Bickerdyke. To incompetent officers and physicians she was brutal, succeeding in having several dismissed, and she retained her position largely through the influence of Grant, Sherman, and others who recognized the value of her services.

In 1876 she moved to San Francisco where she secured through Senator John A. Logan, another wartime patron, a position at the U.S. Mint. She also devoted considerable time to the Salvation Army and similar organizations. She worked tirelessly on behalf of veterans, making numerous trips to Washington to press pension claims, and was herself granted a pension of $25 a month by Congress in 1886.

She returned to Kansas in 1887 and died in Bunker Hill, Kansas, on November 8, 1901.