Well, the practice of praying to departed saints and Mary was one that developed, helped by pagan influences, for Scripture provides no example of any believer praying to anyone in Heaven by the Lord, and reveals that doing otherwise was a practice of pagans, including to the “Queen of Heaven.” (Jer. 44:17,18,19,25). The Catholic Encyclopedia speculates that a further reinforcement of Marian devotion, “was derived from the cult of the angels, which, while pre-Christian in its origin, was heartily embraced by the faithful of the sub-Apostolic age. It seems to have been only as a sequel of some such development that men turned to implore the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. This at least is the common opinion among scholars, though it would perhaps be dangerous to speak too positively. Evidence regarding the popular practice of the early centuries is almost entirely lacking...,” (Catholic Encyclopedia > Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary) Yet, as expected, it imagines this practice came from the apostles and NT church, but which never exampled or instructed it, and instead showed that the believer has immediate access to God in the Divine Christ, (Heb. 10:19), who is the all sufficient and immediate intercessor between God (the Father) and man. (Heb. 2:17,18; 4:15,16) To the glory of God
Ott acknowledges for the first three centuries, the “veneration” of Mary was connected with the veneration of Christ. It is in the fourth century, and especially after Ephesus (431), that the formal veneration of Mary is found. “For the first three centuries, the “veneration” of Mary was intimately connected with the veneration of Christ. From the 4th c onwards we find a formal veneration of Mary herself.”
Llywelyn notes: Mary’s unparalleled stature as a figure to whom the faithful sought recourse grew through the slow accumulation of a complex matrix that included theological speculation, public and private worship, legendary narratives, accounts of miracles, homilies and hymns, and material culture. Expressed often in poetic rather than intellectual language, prayer and praise effectively precedes and underpins the theological elucidation of Mary’s role in salvation. Throughout the patristic period, homilists delighted in discovering intimations of Mary’s virginal motherhood in the phrases, images, objects, episodes, and personages of the Hebrew scriptures. An ever-growing stock of inventive literary images and elaborate phraseology embellished the liturgy. (emphasis mine)
Pelikan observes “…there is no altogether incontestable evidence that it was used before the fourth century, despite Newman’s categorical claim that “the title Theotocos, or Mother of God, was familiar to Christians from primitive times.”
Carroll contends “…there is little evidence or no evidence that anything like the Mary cult existed during the first four centuries of the Christian Church.”
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Ott, 215-16.
Llywelyn, “Mary and Mariology.”
Jaroslov Pelikan, Mary through the Centuries: her place in the history of Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press,1996), 57.
Michael P. Carroll, The Cult of the Virgin Mary: Psychological Origins (Princeton University Press, 1986), 4.
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There's a clear reason it's not met with any clear traces in the first Christian centures...THERE WAS NONE!