was an enslaved woman of Tennessee in the United States who may have been associated with slave trader and Confederate cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest.

She is known primarily from one unsigned anti-Forrest newspaper article that appeared in the wake of the Battle of Fort Pillow,[1] but there are two,[2][3][4] possibly three,[5] other sources that may at least confirm her existence.

correspondent of the New-York Tribune and published in a number of U.S.-aligned newspapers in 1864:"[1] He usually wore, while in the 'nigger' trade in Memphis, a stovepipe hat set on the back of his bead at an angle of forty-five degrees.

"[6] Forrest's most recent major biographer, Jack Hurst, described the Knoxville–Tribune report of 1864 as, overall, "inflammatory but in some ways accurate," and specifically in the case of Catharine: "The partisan invective of the brief article might make it dismissable were it not intriguingly stressful of the name 'Catharine' (while Mary Ann's goes unmentioned) and supported by several other Forrest family names and business activities whose accuracy is verifiable.

He bought from it 'a Negrow [sic] woman named Catharine aged seventeen and her Child named Thomas aged four months boath [sic] of which we warrant sound in body + mind and Slaves for Life and the title fully guaranteed.