Daughter of Thomas Overbury and his wife Septima, Mary Overbury came out to SA as a child in 1856. In 1892 she was on the staff of the School of Design as a lecturer on sculpture. In 1894 she became a Fellow of the Royal SA Society of Arts, and in 1917 was appointed tutor to the Heysen family at Hahndorf. She lived with her sister Margaret at 33 Prescott Tce, Rose Park. Mary Overbury also compiled a history of the SA Society of Arts which was brought up to date and published under her name by H E Fuller in 1933.