Catharina van Palliacatta
about 1631 – about 1683-03
Immediate family
- Children
- Christoffel Snijman
A life in the record
- about 1631 born Born
- about 1683-03 died Died
Stories
- mentioned Forty-six things
What we don't know
- Neither parent is recorded, so this person is not attached to the tree above them.
- No dated record ties this person to a specific piece of ground.
A sourced gap beats an unsourced fill. These are the open questions on this person, stated rather than papered over.
Research notes
[TREE] Added 6 Aug 2026. Named on [S021] as one of the enslaved or free-black people at the head of this family, and held no row in this model until now — the site asserted the descent on a published page while the model could not answer a single question about the person. Dates as the private tree gives them; NO PLACE IMPORTED, per 5. No FamilySearch id yet: see PEOPLE-WITHOUT-FS-ID.md and LEAD-0112. S021 is itself marked provisional — this descent rests on a family tree and not yet on the Cape records — and creating the row does not change that. [TO VERIFY] NOT ONE OF S021'S TEN, AND SHE SHOULD BE. 10 names her by name as one of the three matriarchs of this ancestry - 'Catharina van Paliacatta, Catharina van MalabarM, Angela van BengaleM' - and the site has never carried her. The tree spells it PALLIACATTA with two Ls; the constitution spells it with one. Both are kept: the tree spelling is the row, the spelling is recorded here. Palliacatta is Pulicat on the Coromandel coast.
These are working notes, not finished prose: they carry the reasoning, the corrections and the things still marked to verify. They are kept here so the page itself can read as what is known.
Open questions
-
FamilySearch ids for the enslaved and free-black ancestors, and for Anthony van de Kaap
priority 1 · LEAD-0112
Eleven people at the head of this family — the ten of S021 plus Catharina van PalliacattaH — and the one enslaved man in the family's own estate papers carry no FamilySearch id between them. Which of them have profiles, and what are the ids?
What would settle it An id per person, or a recorded finding that no profile exists.
-
Import the nine Cape descent chains - they are Frans's own ancestry, generation 9 to 13
priority 1 · LEAD-0116
Eight of S021's ten have no recorded child in this model, so the site names a descent it cannot walk. The private tree holds every chain. Importing them means about fifty new person rows across the de Wet, Mocke, Duminy, Snyman, van Dyk, Janse van Vuuren, Smuts and du Preez lines. Is that in scope?
What would settle it Frans deciding. A middle course exists: import only the chains that reach families the site actually writes about, and leave the rest as a stated gap on the page.