Family track 175 years of history back to Ballarat

She is a great, great granddaughter of John and Frances Rebecca Smith, and has found they were some of the first settlers in Ballarat.

Mrs Smith in has been credited as one of the first women on the goldfields.

Originally from England, the Smiths started their journey to Australia on July 17, 1848.

They arrived in Geelong on November 8 with their two daughters Amelia and Lucy, aged eight and six respectively.

According to Frances Smith's obituary, John Smith was on his way to Clunes in 1851 when he stopped to camp at the foot of Black Hill.

After some prospecting, he returned to Geelong to bring his family back to Ballarat with him.

The family returned to Ballarat in September 1851, where they joined diggers on the Yarrowee Creek where Eastern Oval is now.

Decades later, when Ms Elliot's parents died in 1981, she was connected to other family members at the funeral who helped her trace this Ballarat history.

"I hadn't met these people before," she said.

"They invited me to lunch and gave me a copy of a newspaper obituary and that's what really got the ball rolling."

Ms Elliot is a passionate researcher and has since spent years working on tracking down her family's ties both in Victoria and in England.

She previously worked in the legal profession, she said the attention to detail was helpful in her pursuit.

Smith family descendants came from all over the country to Ballarat earlier this month in order to visit the gravesite in the Ballarat New Cemetery and celebrate their family history, commemorating 175 years since they first arrived in Australia.

"I think its an appropriate time to acknowledge and commemorate the fact that these people came half a world away in tiny sailing ships, knowing that they would never see their families again," Ms Elliot said.

"They were coming to an unknown land, they arrived well before gold was discovered and they wanted a better life."

The better life the Smiths were seeking "gave rise" to a number of descendants including herself, Ms Elliot said.