Hello Wiggy,
Yes it was wet! Pure serendipity that I came across your post- I haven't opened Catherine's file in two years! Planted a tree this morning, came in for coffee and just casually googled catherine for no reason.
I'm doing this from memory, not from my file, just to get the dialogue started and to stimulate your questions, then if necessary I can check what I have.
No, I'm not a descendant- moved here almost 30 years ago, am a local history buff, we lived for 7 years on the property next to Killymoon, and I sort of fell into researching Thomas and then of course Catherine, and the more I found,and it was not easy as you have found, the more facinating it became- their story is an epic of early Colonial history, from Old Bailey to government House, Governors and Bushrangers, it would make a great film, with Meryl Streep in her prime or Cate Blanchett as Catherine!
She claimed to be innocent at her trial in 1806, "as innocent as this babe at my breast", and she had a child with her on the Syndey Cove in 1807. No further trace of the child, She was however reported as having a child by Overhand in the NSW 1814 muster. No record in the 1811 muster as Overhand was away as captain of the Lady Nelson taking Gov Macquarie to VDL for his first tour. In the previous year theNSW Colonial Secretary's records are full of reports of aggro between Overhand and the commandant of Newcastle penal settlement, apparently over catherine , because Macquarie issued a special order for her to be removed from Newcastle and brought to Sydney, where she married Overhand (1810). My belief is that this child might have been Anne, but have no proof, and Catherine was a master(sic) at not being included in records. No other reference to Anne until her marriage, apart from the 1837 comment by bushranger Martin Cash in his "personal narrative" that the "missus" had an adopted daughter.
I don't like Stieglitz, and I think he was a money grubbing opportunist. Go to http//images.statelibrary.tas.gov.au and search for stieglitz. He had to sell out to young Thomas when Catherine died, because Killymoon was old Tom's grant and had been left to Catherine in trust for young Tom. I think young Tom took the Ransom name because he wasn't a Stieglitz, didn't like his stepfather, recognised that his inheritance derived from old Thomas, and wanted to lose his mother's origins for her.
You need to try and obtain a copy of "Martin Cash- his personal narrative as a bushranger in VDL' and check page 20 about his time at killymoon as a dairyman in 1837. Also a wonderful description of Stieglitz chatting up Catherine in the Royal Oak in 1829, in "The Hermit in Van Diemens land"- I don't know whether it is online.
Bryan Overhand was dismissed as Captain of Lady Nelson in 1814 for helping convicts to abscond and signed on the Emu which sank in 1815 in Cape Town. A Captain Benjamin Ormond (same initials) started to arrive in Hobart 1817 and died in Parramatta 1824 aged 40. B aond BO never appeared in the records at the same time. Ormond was in Hobart in March 1820. My theory is that he made contact with Catherine and had a one night stand with his wife,possibly even with knowledge of Thomas, (she never married Thomas), he died in 1824, she didn't know for a number of years until Thomas died, so was free to marry Stieglitz in 1829. Explains all, and keeps her respectable. No trace of Anne in all this though.
I have not yet found out about her pre 1806. Who was Michael McNalty, supposedly her husband, what was her maiden name, where was she born- was she Irish, and was she married to a McNalty's from Armagh where Stieglitz was born (1803). I even theorised as well that Catherine was Thomas's daughter! So there are still plenty of unknowns.
Over to you
David
