John Thomas was born at Gumeracha on 4 August, 1865. He received his early schooling at the Lower Alma School and was able to attend the Gawler High School while his parents were living near Gawler. As a young man he worked with his father at “Pine Farm" before farming on his own at Bow Hill, east of Mannum on the River Murray, for six years. At the age of nearly 31 he married Elizabeth Ann Humphrys at the Hamley Bridge Congregational Church on 4 March, 1896. Elizabeth was born at Yatina, in the midnorth of the State, on 12 December, 1876. After their marriage, John Thomas returned with his wife to Bow Hill, where they farmed for another six years. Their first child Mabel Mary Lillian was born at Bow Hill in 1898. When Elizabeth was pregnant with their second child, she returned to Hamley Bridge for the birth, as her mother was a mid-wife. Ella Marion was born in 1900. A son William Thomas was born at Bow Hill in 1902.

It was after the birth of the Gregorys' first son that John Thomas and Elizabeth returned to the Hamley Bridge district. The purchase of “Boundary Farm" next door to his father's farm in 1902 was the reason for the shift. The Bow Hill farm was rented out for a while and eventually sold. “Boundary Farm" was about six kilometres west of Barabba, which in those days had a Methodist Church, school and a Post Office. Five children - Gertrude Carrie, Alfred Ernest, Gladys Ellen, Mark Clarence and Elsie Muriel – were born in the house at “Boundary Farm" between 1904 and 1915. The youngest child of John Thomas and Elizabeth Gregory, Alice Elizabeth, was born in 1923 in the Hamley Bridge Hospital.

In 1927, on the death of Thomas Gregory, “Boundary Farm“ was left to his only son John Thomas, while “Pine Farm" was to be distributed in equal shares among his three grandsons. When William and Alfred were old enough, they worked “Pine Farm" after Thomas their grandfather moved to Brighton in 1915, and after his death they leased it for some time. In 1928 a large new residence was built for John Thomas on “Pine Farm". The old limestone cottage had been rented out from 1915 to 1921 and was then abandoned.

John Thomas kept diaries throughout his life and many of the farms’ activities were chronicled in these diaries. Water mains were laid in 1902, the year of his return from Bow Hill. Some of the land was cleared of bushes in the mid-1910’s and the stump fences on "Boundary Farm" were replaced in 1913. He mentions his father frequently in his diaries and would have seen him frequently, up to 1915, as John Thomas collected his mail from Stockyard Creek. It seems Mary Ann, his mother, is only mentioned in the weeks previous to her death in 1913.

John Thomas end Elizabeth Gregory were known as very good Church people, the former also serving one term on the Council. Elizabeth died on 7 March, 1953, aged 76, and her husband passed away six years later, on 23 September, 1959, aged 94. Both are buried at the Hemley Bridge cemetery.

The great-grandson at Thomas and Mary Ann Gregory, Robert W.T. Gregory, and his family are the present owners of "Pine Farm" at Stockyard Creek. Robert has been an active member of the Freemasons, including three terms as Master of the Hamley Bridge Lodge, end thereby joining four other Gregory Past Masters of the Lodge. Robert and Helen Gregory‘s eldest son Richard was Lower North Area President of Rural Youth in 1980 and a member of the Tarlee ‘A’ Grade Debating Team which won the Rural Youth Debate State Final in 1978.