Hi Wiggy,
You're making sense! My Gran spent hours and hours and days telling me about my origins. It gave me an interest in family history, and decades later, I have "proved" most of the tales, and found stacks of official records to support her tales. I am yet to disprove any of her tales.
I don't think that TS Amos was father of Catharine's Thomas, as AMOS was only in VDL for two short visits as a Court Solicitor, shortly before his death in November 1819 in Sydney from an illness. I think you have that child born 1821 ?
Early on this thread you mentioned that Catharine could have been from the West Indies. Is this family lore, have you anything to support this ? I think there are online resources to follow up on genie info from those British Colonial times at St Kitts etc.
Thomas McNally, her son, is mentioned in various newspapers as Thomas Ransom, - he's there as a signature to a letter to the editor supporting Frederick L Von S's letter. (Haven't got nla online open at this minute).
I phoned a friend, and she suggests the following:
a) McNally (or variations) is quite likely to be her birth surname (probability about 70% of that)
b) Many women in PJ were known locally as "Mrs ......" but retained their maiden name on official records in those times, especially if licencee of hotels. And presume same pattern would occur in VDL although by 1829 they were doing "their own thing there".
c) Married women who earned an income retained their birth name (laundress, etc), as that was "who they were" officially, eg they were the Lady of John Smith Esq, if being announced at a function, but were Mary Brown if being recorded on a government document. This practice did not change until around the 1860's. There are many instances on Musters where female still listed under her birth surname, even though legally married and living with her husband AND children.
d) Back in Penal era .... As the clerks were recording names that were given orally, the clerks often did not understand the accents - clerks were educated in lots of academic subjects, but did not have training in accents from the slums that caused the social issues that led to convictions and transportation.
e) FREE SETTLERS and MILITARY Officers often brought servants with them. As she was skilled enough to conduct the hotel at Green Ponds, it is MOST LIKELY she arrived as a well trained household servant rather than as a convict. If that is so, NO NAMES were ever recorded on arrival documents. She will just be "and household" if that. If this occured, then ummm...... You will not find her arrival date except by deduction from other records.
f) As she did NOT have any children from her 1830 marriage, it is likely she FIBBED about her age to that husband- could be she was up to fifteen years OLDER. - ie in her 80's when she died. [/b]
g) if Thomas Ransom was UNWILLING to marry her, was it because she was perhaps different religion/denomination to him?
I think I have included everything mentioned.
HAVE JUST READ ROBYN'S POST, yes, Wiggy, Chip UP High.
I am a great great great grandchild of a chap who was charged at Parramatta with bigamy, found guilty and then pardoned when his earlier wife's husband turned up and dobbed HER in. Umm, that's the same wife who had dobbed in my ggg grandfather (he was then in his 50's, an his new wife was a teenager, who never returned to that marriage once he had been arrested, just days after going through the ceremony) -His arrest, trial and verdict and pardon got into "all" the newspapers in the 1840's,. My Gran told me about it when I was a young'un in the 1950's, and now the newspapers are online, and I have finally convinced a couple of cousins that our Gran's stories were right).
JM
