People Australia

Ann Sandlin (c.1754-1809), a needleworker, and the wife of Hugh Sandlin, otherwise Lines, otherwise Patten, was found guilty on 13 December 1786 at the Old Bailey, London, of stealing, and then pawning, a saucepan, kettle, and flat iron from her lodgings. Sentenced to 7 years transportation, she was delivered to the Lady Penrhyn on 9 January 1787 with her young son, Hugh. Hugh died in April while the Fleet lay at Portsmouth.

Sandlin had a son, Richard, with Richard Floan, a sailor, in 1788. He was baptised on 17 September 1788 and buried on 19 September 1788. Sandlin then had a daughter, Elizabeth, with another sailor John Winter; she was baptised on 15 August 1790. She worked as a cook (as Ann Sandilon) at the Sydney orphanage, receiving £8.8s. for the year ended 3 August 1802.

As Ann Sandlands she was buried at Sydney on 2 January 1809, after falling out of a boat and drowning at Cockle Bay. The newspaper report of the inquest gave her name as Ann Battan.

* information from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), pp 322-23