Catherine Ada Kelly (12 July 1863 – October 1898) was the younger sister of famous Australian outlaw Ned Kelly. Early life Kate Kelly was born in Beveridge, Victoria, Australia, on 12 July 1863 to parents John and Ellen Kelly (née Quinn), their seventh child. The family moved to Avenel soon after her birth, where another child, Grace, was born. John Kelly died of dropsy when Kelly was four years old. Ellen Kelly then moved the family to her sisters' house at Greta. One year later, the family moved once again, to a two-room hut on leased land at nearby Eleven Mile Creek, becoming one of the growing number of poor, Catholic and Irish born selectors in the area, limited to the marginal land that was not already claimed by wealthy squatters in the area. Kelly helped her mother bring up the family, which included three more children to her mother's second husband George King. The Fitzpatrick incident The local police/ex-convicts paid attention to the vulnerable and widowed Ellen Kelly with small children, the Lloyds and the Quinn's, persecuting those struggling families with numerous trumped-up charges. Police in those times were mostly ex-convicts, they were scarce and a law unto themselves. In north east Victoria they took advantage of the situation and could act upon inhabitants with little or no accountability. There were very few Irish Catholics in the Greta area as most families were members of the Primitive Methodist Church who were honest hard-working families. Ellen Kelly applied for and was granted a small 88 acre plot of marginal land. She remained on there for most of her life although she had trouble at times paying her rent as the plot was of unsustainable poor land, being too small to be viable. Her first husband, John Kelly, had died when their children were toddlers, and in that remote area she and her children were the target for ongoing police/ex-convict harassment, extortion and abuse. Wealthy squatters held sway with land holdings taking all the best land and waterways, but the Victorian government enacted The Lands Act in 1860 granting land on generous terms to settlers. The act was used by squatters, but by 1869 the matter was settled in favour of some more influential settlers. Across the vast spaces of the colony, livestock was frequently stolen by vagrants, those on the way to mines or diggings, or natives or even police