Mary Ann was the first child of Richard and Elizabeth Sandercock. She was born in the hamlet of St. Thomas Street, Launceston, Cornwall, on 20 March, 1836, and baptised at St. Thomas the Apostle Church there on 18 April in the same year. As a girl she would have attended one of the Launceston schools in the parish of St. Thomas, but was helping her mother Elizabeth in the house at Westgate Street at the time of the 1851 Census in Launceston. Being the eldest of the eight Sandercock children, Mary Ann was no doubt called upon to take over some of her mother's duties and responsibilities, while the younger ones were being raised. She was already a young woman of 17 when the Sandercocks left St. Thomas Street, Launceston, and emigrated to South Australia in July, 1853.

Her duties in the new household at Berry Hill, Kenton Valley, may have been much the same during those first few years in South Australia. Women had to milk cows, make the family's butter, bread, jams, preserves and often soap and candles as well. As Elizabeth Sandercock had two more children by 1859, her daughter Mary Ann and the younger daughters would have had plenty to do. Nothing is known or Mary Ann’s activities until 1864, when she was living at Thebarton, a village close to the capital of Adelaide. She may have been employed as a companion or a similar position. At the age of 28, Mary Ann married Thomas Gregory at a private residence in Thebarton, on 6 September, 1864. Thomas was aged 22, and the ceremony was performed by the Wesleyan minister from Gumeracha, Rev. John S. Greer. Thomas's brother William Gregory, like him a farmer from Gumeracha, was one of the witnesses. For some reason, the name of Richard Sandercock, as the father of Mary Ann, was not written down on the marriage certificate.

Thomas Gregory was born at Gumeracha on 16 August, 1842. His parents were Mr and Mrs George Gregory, who had emigrated from Belford, a rural district of Northumberland, in England, in 1837, arriving on the ship "Hartley" on 27 October. Fellow passengers on the “Hartley” included William Giles, Colonial Manager of the South Australian Company, J.B. Shepherdson, the colony‘s first schoolmaster, Rev. T.Q. Stow, Congregational minister, and William Beavis Randell and his family. After some time as a storekeeper in Adelaide, Mr George Gregory came up to Gumeracha to work land leased from the S.A. Company. It is believed that the Gregory home was the third house built at Gumeracha.

The story of the Gregory family is well told in the Gumeracha Centenary History, 1839-1939. Their early experiences as farmers in the Gumeracha district and their friendly associations with the local Narayerie aboriginal tribe would have given the Gregory children, five sons and one daughter, many interesting tales to pass on to their descendants. Thomas’s parents were active members of the Methodist Church, and the family joined others from Gumeracha as they walked over the hills to Kersbrook for public worship. A Methodist church was built at Gumeracha in 1860, and the Gregorys were among those responsible for its erection. They served it as local preachers, a daughter as organist, and offered their home to board young bachelor ministers. A memorial window in the church, in Wellington Street, to the Gregory family has this text on the glass: "Thou has blessed the Work of their hands."

After their marriage in 1864, Thomas and Mary Ann Gregory stayed at Gumeracha for two years. Their only son John Thomas Gregory was born at Gumeracha on 4 August, 1865. The family moved to Mount Pleasant for about two years, and in 1868 moved to a farm at Pinkerton Plains, about eight kilometres south of Hamley Bridge in the Lower North area of the State. Here the Gregorys’ first daughter Mary Louise was born, on 11 August. 1871.

Farmland in the Hamley Bridge area was first held by Occupation Licence and later purchased by farmers who began clearing the land about 1860. It was cleared by grubbing and mullerising, burning the thinner vegetation and turning over the soil with the stump jump plough. The stumps were used to make fences for the paddocks, and some of Thomas Gregory's original fences were not replaced by wire fences until about 1913.

In 1872 Thomas selected land on lease at Stockyard Creek, in little northwest of Hamley Bridge. On 25 January, 1878, he purchased 402 acres on Sections 744, 745, 747 and 748, Hundred of Alma, for which he paid 402 pounds. He called the farm “Pine Farm" on account of the native pines growing in the area. Water was conveyed to the farm from the River Light, though there was also water on “Pine Farm" from native wells and underground wells and dams. Later Sections 746 and 749 were purchased, bringing the total acreage on “Pine Farm" to 618 acres. The original house had four rooms, with outside walls of limestone and the inside partition walls of pine, pug and mortar. A verandah on the front of the house faced the west. Today the house is a ruin with only a few walls remaining.

Thomas and Mary Ann‘s second daughter Lillian Elizabeth was born on 3 April, 1874, at Stockyard Creek. When the two girls were old enough to begin their schooling, the family leased "Pine Farm" from about 1878 to neighbours, while they went to live near Gawler. During 1881-1882 the farm was leased to a John Spillane. While at Gawler it is believed that John Thomas had some secondary schooling. He had earlier attended the Lower Alma Primary School near “Pine Farm". When his schooling was finished, the Gregorys returned to “Pine Farm". Later, in 1896, John Thomas married, and it is from several of his children that we have some small recollections of Mary Ann Gregory.

Her granddaughter Mrs Ella Fyfe remembers Mary Ann as a rather plump and formidable person. She had little time for her grand-children - John Thomas and his wife Elizabeth and their family were then living at Barabba, west of Hamley Bridge - and was in the habit of taking her afternoon tea alone in the parlour at “Pine Farm" while the rest (Thomas and the two spinsters Louisa and Lillian) had theirs with John Thomas’s children in the kitchen. Mary Ann liked to bake caraway seed cakes and biscuits, and as these were not at all liked by her grandchildren, it was probably a good thing that Grandmother was not in the kitchen at such times! Ella Fyfe does not remember her grandmother ever talking about the “old days“. She was reserved and strict, even with her own daughters. Mary Ann evidently did not wish Louisa and Lillian (“Lil”) to marry, and as they remained spinsters, it seems they complied with her wishes, despite receiving proposals of marriage. They stayed home with Mary Ann until her death.

The old ruined house at “Pine Farm“ still has the perimeter of its garden marked by stands of aloes. Mary Ann maintained a garden of flowers, fruit trees and vegetables. An old photograph of the front aspect of “Pine Farm", with John Thomas and his two sisters standing behind the branch paling fence, shows a creeping plant growing up to the gutters of the house, to shield the front room from the afternoon sun. There are hanging baskets with plants and climbing rose bushes. Life may well have been snug and comfortable in the Gregory farmhouse, despite Mary Ann's apparent severity of manner.

Thomas and Mary Ann were members of the Barabba Methodist Church - Thomas for over 20 years -- and where he took a lively interest in the Sunday School and its affairs. He was Superintendant for some years and often took his grandchildren to Sunday School with him. He was also a local preacher at Barabba, and his interest in church affairs is shown by the number of bequests he left to various Methodist organisations after his death. He preached a service at Barabba when he was 70 years old, as the diary of his son John Thomas records the date as 2 February, 1913.

Thomas Gregory was a councillor on the Alma Plains District Council for some time. Apparently he was also interested in local agricultural shows and was asked to the Swan Reach Show in 1901 “in the capacity of judge", as he wrote in a letter to John Thomas. What he was to judge, however, was not mentioned on that occasion.  

In 1902, Thomas purchased “Boundary Farm”, adjoining the south boundary of “Pine Farm". This had a total of 671 acres on Sections 778, 779, 780, 781, 782 and 783, Hundred of Alma, and was purchased for John Thomas and his family to live on. Later the acreage was further increased by the purchase of Sections 770, 772, 774, 775, 776 and 777.

Mary Ann Gregory died of a cerebral thrombosis ("stroke") on 8 July, 1913, after 3½ weeks of suffering. She was aged 77 years at the time of her death, and was buried at the Hamley Bridge cemetery. A marble stone has been placed on her grave. In July, 1915, Thomas remarried, his second wife being a widow Mrs Mary Ann Palmer of Brighton. About 1915 Thomas retired from Stockyard Creek. He went to live at The Broadway, Glenelg, with his second wife and died there on 14 January, 1927, at the age of 84 years. He was buried in St. Jude's Church of England cemetery, Brighton, and his date of death was also recorded on the gravestone of his first wife Mary Ann Sandercock at Hamley Bridge. His second wife died in 1945.
Thomas Gregory was obviously a most successful farmer, as after his death his estate was sworn not to exceed 31,000 pounds in value. Under the terms of his Will he left endowments to many organisations, reflecting his humanitarian and religious affiliations.

They included the British and Foreign Bible Society. Adelaide Children’s Hospital, S.A. Institution for the Blind, Deaf and Dumb, at Brighton, and four Methodist charities: the Foreign Missionary Society, Home Mission and Church Extension Funds, The Training Home, Brighton, and the Necessitous Local Preachers' Fund.