FAMILY NAME	BALL
Given name 1	Mary
Given name 2 etc	Elizabeth
Date of Birth	Baptised 23/9/1823, St Luke’s, Finsbury
Place of Birth	Bunhill Row, London
Date of Death	25/12/1897, buried 27/12
Place of Death	Murtoa, Victoria, Australia
Place of Burial	Murtoa, Victoria
Arrived in South Australia (date/ship etc.)	Duchess of Northumberland, 19/12/1839
Lived in Prospect Council Area (Dates)	1840-1857
Addresses in Prospect Council Area	Section 349, allotment 51, western half
Lived outside Prospect Council area (Dates)	1856-1897
Addresses outside Prospect Council Area	Cathcart, Ararat, Victoria
Names of houses (if any)
Parents - names; DOBs etc (if known)	David Ball, 1789-30/8/1877 Martha Pimlot Ball, 15/5/1780-20/10/1876
Spouse(s) - including maiden name; DOBs etc. (if known)	James Colley
Date(s) of Marriage(s)	18/3/1840
Place(s) of Marriage(s)	Adelaide
Children - names and dates of birth/death if known	Eliza Louse Colley 1841-1842 Frances Emma Colley Gaywood 1842-1926 William Bennett Colley 1845-1927 Clarissa Augusta Colley Gillen 1846-1942 James Ball Colley 1848-1937 Mary Elizabeth Colley McDonnell 1849- Anne Jane Colley Harris 1852-1948 Henry William Colley 1854-1943 John Smith Colley 1846-1947
Education	Literate
Occupation(s)	Ran a shop in Cathcart
Interests/Activities
Religion/Churches	Church of England
Local Government experience (if any)
Notes (points of interest etc.)	It has to be said that Mary Elizabeth Colley does seem to have had a hard life. At the age of 16 she made a hazardous sea voyage, condemning her to never seeing her mother again. She was married at the age of 16 to a much older man, and became step-mother to four children. Nine months after her marriage, she gave birth to a baby girl. A year later, pregnant again, the first baby died. Within the next three years, she gave birth to Frances and then William; and two of her husband’s sons from his first marriage, still children, died. James and Mary Colley must have felt they couldn't turn a trick.   By the time they went to Victoria in 1857, Mary had 8 children of her own, most under the age of 14. They sailed for a couple of days to Portland, which was unlikely to have been a joy ride. Worse was to come, for they went the rest of the way in a bullock dray. There were no proper roads and it would have taken them weeks to get to Ararat. Gold had been found less than two years earlier, and Ararat was really just a shanty town. Most of the people there would have been men, many of them Chinese. (The first strike was by a couple of Chinese men, en route to somewhere else.)   They seem to have settled in Cathcart, close to Ararat, but there was no gold lining their particular pavements. One suspects Mary struggled her whole life just to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.
Cross-references eg to siblings, parents, children	Siblings Henry William Ball and Mary Elizabeth Ball Colley
Sources of information	BDM and shipping records
Principal Researcher(s)	Joan Wilcox