Hi there, HELP!!! Was she born McNally or married to a McNally?? Can anyone find any reference to her in Ireland please??
Catharine Christiana MCNALLY was definitely in Tasmania Australia after 1817.
Age at death was given as 68 - making her birth year about 1789/90.
We are wondering if Ireland may have been her birth place - oddly, there is absolutely
no record of her being in Australia before she appears in Hobart. The possibility of her being a daughter of a soldier/marine/convict from the first/second fleet 1788 - 1790 has occurred to us - but research turns up nothing. Some families of free people coming to the colony weren't named - but the husbands were generally speaking.
We know very little about her as she seems to have swum all the way from the Emerald Isle to our shores!!!!
She had a child named Anne in about 1817/18 - probably in Tasmania, (and maybe with a Thomas Amos)- though there are no records for this. Surname for the child was RANSOM - she was adopted to that name.
She had a son named Thomas McNally in November 1820 in Hobart - baptised in St David's Church of England in December of that year. This Thomas later took name of Ransom.
She lived with and was faithful partner to Thomas RANSOM Snr with whom she ran several Inns over the years - but she never married him - why, we can't discover, but it seemed to be something on her side which prevented marriage. Thomas was much older that Catharine. However, when Thomas died, she was able to marry Frederick Von STIEGLITZ in 1830 at Green Ponds in Tasmania. They had no children. (So maybe Thomas had the impediment to marriage - we just don't know.)
Catharine ( who seems to have been known as Christina after her marriage) died in 1857 and is buried at Cullenswood Historic Cemetery in Tasmania, as Christina Stieglitz aged 68.
ANY HELP would be very welcome.
Cheers,
Wiggy