Pioneer family reunion

COVID restrictions have pushed the event out a year, but descendants of one of Ballan’s pioneer families are now planning to meet for a 180th anniversary reunion next month.

February 2022 marked 180 years since John and Emma Lay arrived in Australia, but a reunion acknowledging their arrival will take place at 10.45 am at the Ballan Cemetery in Gosling Street, on Sunday 19 February this year.

After meeting at the Ballan Cemetery, the group will head to the Mechanics Institute on Inglis Street, where a BYO lunch and other activities will be held.

The day will coincide with the arrival date of the British emigration ship ‘Regulus’ 181 years ago to Port Phillip in 1842, when their ancestors settled in the district, and where some descendants still reside.

John and Emma Lay knew Thomas Pyke and accompanied him from Wiltshire, England, to work for him as a married couple on ‘Morockdong Estate’. John’s brother Thomas Lay, and his wife Eliza, arrived in Ballan at the same time, but later moved away.

Eventually John and Emma Lay owned a property at East Ballan called “Montview”, which remained in the family for many years.

The couple had 12 children all born in the Ballan area; they all married and had heirs. Two of their infant grandchildren, Mary Ann Lay and Henry Charles Lay are buried in unknown sites at the Old Ballan Cemetery.

John died in 1886, and Emma 14 years later in 1900.

In 2002, descendants of John and Emma Lay had a gravestone erected on the site, and two years later a book was launched, “That dinkum breed of true Aussies: the story of the Lay family from Wiltshire to Ballan”. This family history was compiled by Dr. M. G. Lay (AM).

For further information, please contact Denise Lay on 0417 306 600.