Historians uncover the names and stories of women on Sovereign Hill's Pioneer Women of Ballarat montage

After six months of research, historians Lucy Bracey and Fiona Poulton managed to identify and piece together the stories of all but one of the women through painstaking detective work in libraries and online .

For years the montage, which belongs to Ballarat Historical Society, has been in the collection of Sovereign Hill Museums Association but little has been known about it.

After Sovereign Hill received a local history grant to research the background of the montage the historians, who work for Way Back When, were approached to uncover the stories behind the women in the portraits.

"It was a pretty challenging project," Ms Bracey said. "At some point someone from the Ballarat Historical Society had created a list of the women's names but it was their married names, so their husband's name - it was a starting point and definitely better than nothing but it was still a challenge to find who these women were."

Although unable to conclusively determine why the montage was created some time between 1870 and 1890, it originally celebrated the women's status as wives of Ballarat's prominent male citizens.

"We are not able to conclusively say why it was created but what we did find is very a strong link to the Old Colonists Association ... which started in 1883 as a philanthropic and charity association to provide aid and assist ageing colonists," Ms Bracey said.

"To become a member you had to be male, of good character and repute, and resident in the colony for a quarter of a century so we are looking at people who arrived in Ballarat prior to the gold-rush and most of the women in this montage, their husbands were members and a lot of the women were honorary members.

"But they're not all just wealthy women, you have pioneers who were wealthy and influential but also working class women and some who died in relative poverty - it may be some of these women received aid from the Old Colonists Association."

Ms Bracey said one of her favourite stories was that of Mary Ann Morey, who emigrated as an assistant migrant as a 17-year-old.

"She came from a family of very working class people in England ... and as an assisted migrant her passage was paid for but she had to work as a servant for a period of time in the colony after she arrived.

"She got married in Ballarat East, had at least 17 children of which 11 survived, and her husband ended up making a fortune in mining speculation.

"In the 1880s they travelled the world ... and when they returned he became mayor of Ballarat and she took on the role of mayoress so she started off as a teen servant with nothing and ended up this quite influential wealthy woman."

Another woman in the portraits, Eliza Rippin, had a very unhappy marriage but built several successful businesses including a boarding house and hotel. Under the laws of the day, her husband took her to court to claim the businesses for himself and won, meaning she had to hand everything over to him.

Ms Bracey said reading the court records she could almost hear Ms Rippin's voice.

While the pandemic hampered some of their research, Ms Bracey and Ms Poulton were still able to access the collections of the Eureka Centre library and online resources including overseas births and marriage records, Trove and other sites.

To mark International Women's Day next Tuesday, Ms Bracey and Ms Poulton will highlight their research and the stories of the women in the montage at an event to launch their e-book Courage and Resilience: The Pioneer Women of Ballarat Montage.

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"We will talk through the process, and some of the highlights of the stories we uncovered, look at the challenge of finding women in the archives and why we need to keep looking.

"They are harder to find for a number of reasons, and part of that is that a lot of women when they got married, they lost their identity because of the way society was set up. A lot of women didn't have property rights, they didn't have anything that would link them in the records or leave a footprint in the record but they are there ... you just have to look closely.

"It's like building a case - you have to make sure all your evidence is locked in and water tight."

The book includes the 32 photos of the women and their biographies and will be available from sovereignhill.com.au.

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