Emilia Louise Aronson was born on 29 March 1842 in
Bangor,
Caernarfonshire (present-day Gwynedd) to John Aronson (né Aaronson), a
Prussian-born
jeweller and
draper, and Maria Aronson (née Lazarus). Baeyertz was born to an
Orthodox Jewish family. Instead, she spent her time with her mother, who used to read Shakespeare to her, and would spend time in her family's library practising reading aloud. When she was old enough, she attended social events and soon met a young Jewish man. He asked her father for her hand in marriage, and the father agreed on the condition that the man take out life insurance. While Emilia was planning the wedding, her fiancé attended doctor's appointments as part of the insurance underwriting process. There he was diagnosed with
tuberculosis and told that he did not have long to live. In February 1864, her family sent her and her brother to Melbourne to live with her sister, with the intention of helping to improve Baeyertz's health. By the time the siblings arrived by ship in Melbourne, Baeyertz had already recovered and she quickly integrated herself into the Australian social life. She soon met Charles Baeyertz, a bank manager at the
Richmond branch of
National Bank of Australasia and a practising
Anglican. The couple started a relationship, keeping it secret from both their families. The couple married in secret at
Christ Church in Hawthorn, Victoria on 16 October 1865. Soon after, the Baeyertz family discovered the marriage and disowned her for marrying a non-Jewish man. and they had two children, son
Charles Nalder who went on to be a journalist and establish a New Zealand magazine, and daughter Marion. Baeyertz started attending church with her husband, and she decided to convert to Christianity for her children's sake towards the end of the 1860s, when Marion was baptised. She did not believe in the Christian tenets, so she had a friend fill in her baptism application to ensure that the answers were correct. ==Evangelical work==