Catharine Crist was born around 1827 in New York to Samuel and Sallie Crist. Her father was a farmer who owned $3,000 of real estate and $600 of personal property by 1860. The family lived in Bethel, New York, until the early 1860s, when they moved to Montgomery, New York. She apparently never married, and she lived with her father until at least 1880. She died sometime after 1880.