Person’s Profile
Catherine Barter (b.1818/9)
Description
traveller and schoolmistress
Biography
The daughter of the Rev. Charles Barter, Rector of Sarsden, and niece of the Rev. Robert Speckott Barter, she seems to have lived near her brother the Rev. Henry Barter, Vicar of Shipton-under-Wychwood, and run (in 1871) a small school, whose pupils included a South African ward named Salome Melango. CMY calls her ‘Kate Barter’ and refers to her ‘young Zulus’. She is not to be confused with her sister-in-law Elspeth Catherine ‘Kitty’ (Moberly) Barter, or with her first cousin Katherine Mary (Barter) Wordsworth. She was the author of an anonymous travel book Alone among the Zulus: The narrative of a journey through the Zulu country, South Africa. By a plain woman (London: SPCK 1866) and has an entry in S. O. Spencer, British settlers in Natal, 1824-1857: A Biographical Register (2001). She was born at Broadstone, Oxfordshire.
