Catheryna Rombout Brett (also Catherina, Catherine, and Catharyna) was the daughter of New York City mayor and land baron Francis Rombouts and Helena Teller Bogardus Van Ball. She inherited a one-third interest in the sprawling Rombout Patent in today's southern Dutchess County, New York, at just four years old. At 16 she married a formal British naval lieutenant, Roger Brett, and the two relocated afterwards from the family home in New York City to their land upstate, reportedly the first permanent White settlers there.