Nancy Yeats (Yates)

- Female convict- Lady Penrhyn - David Collins - 1788 - James John Grant - Van Daemons land - Norfolk Island -

Nancy Yeats was sentenced to death at York on 9 July 1785 for breaking into a house at Milton, and stealing 36 yards of printed cotton.

She was reprieved to transportation and embarked on Lady Penrhyn on 31 January 1787.

She was chosen to go to Norfolk Island in February 1788, “recommended as a very fit person to go, having uniformly behaved well during the whole of the voyage”, but she chose to stay at Port Jackson.

On 13 September 1790 she bore a daughter Marianne Letitia by David Collins and a son George in 1793.

Nancy went back to England but appears to have returned to the colony with her children on the Albion on 29 June 1799.

She married a Scottish convict and former lawyer, James John Grant on 13 November 1800 at St. James Parramatta.  James Grant died on 10 April 1812 and Nancy is listed in the 1814 muster as a widow living in the Sydney district, but there has been no further record of her found.

Her children by David Collins maintained contact with their father.  George entered the Navy, serving on ‘Porpoise’ from 1807.  Marianne married Samuel chance, a sea captain, and later lived in Van Daemons land.

Information from The Founders of Australia by Mollie Gillen.

Reference

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