Mary Ann Houghton1

F, #8821, b. 21 March 1823, d. 2 March 1831

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
BirthMar 21, 1823Sterling, MA, USA2
DeathMar 2, 1831Sterling, Worcester Co., MA, USA2,3
BurialChocksett Burial Ground Cemetery, Sterling, Worcester Co., MA, USA, ae 7 Section N
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 380 #1044.
  2. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 380.
  3. [S451] Sterling MA VRs, p. 122.

Frederick T. Houghton1

M, #8822, b. 15 April 1825, d. 17 February 1911

Family: Nancy Josephine Moore b. 19 Apr 1844, d. 24 Jan 1919

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthApr 15, 1825Sterling, MA, USA, age 45 in 1870 census; age 55 in 1880 census; Apr 1825, age 75 in 1900 census; age 85 in 1910 census2,3,4,5
Immigration1849CA, USA2
MarriageMay 20, 1859JWH: 20 May 1844; mar 40 years in 1900 census2,5
1870 Census1870Oakland, Alameda Co., CA, USA, age 46, a patent boot mfr.6,7
1880 Census1880Hornitos, CA, USA, age 55, married8
1880 Census1880Alameda, Alameda Co., CA, USA, age 55, a miner9,10
1900 Census1900Hornitos, Mariposa Co., CA, USA, Frederick L. Houghton, living alone, 75, miner11,12
ResidenceHornitos, CA, USA, JWH: Hornitas, CA2
Author1907Oakland, Alameda Co., CA, USA, A Frederick T. Houghton, author of History of the state of California and biographical record of Oakland and environs13
Research1910Frederick is listed as widowed when with his daughter Mary in census; but listed with Nancy in 2nd listing
Occupation1910gold quartz miner14
1910 CensusApr 22, 1910Oakland, Alameda Co., CA, USA, age 85, none3,14
DeathFeb 17, 1911Oakland, Alameda Co., CA, USA5
ProbateMay 1, 1911Napa, CA, USA, Case Files, No 1848-1875, 1910-1911: full will on Ancestry15
BiographyJWH: 'In a letter written in 1898, he said: 'I have great pride in the race of Houghtons and have never heard of any of them being criminals or occupying state prisons, and it is said they have a reputation of paying their debts. My father, Samuel Houghton, of Sterling, Mass., was a director and very active in calling the convention held at Worcester, Mass., about the year 1840, and I, a boy of 15, was allowed to attend, and now at the age of 73 years I look back to it with pleasure and gratification, not forgetting the obligation I am under to my parents for taking me with them. I am also deeply grateful to you for the effort you are making to put in permanent form the records of our family. My father spent over ten thousand dollars in looking up the genealogy of the Houghton family and trying to find our connection with our English ancestry, but the burning of the Boston Record office destroyed all the results of his efforts.' In another letter written in 1899 on his 74th birthday, he says: 'I am one of the society of California Pioneers and if I live until Aug. 8th next will have been a resident of the Golden State 50 years, having come in the year 1849. Being so old now, I will probably cross over before the completion of your biographical work, but you have my best wishes for your successes.' This is only one of many score similar appreciative letters received since I have been engaged in this work.'

Frederick T. Houghton Memoirs (at age 76): He was educated in the district school and spent 6 months at the Manual Labor High School. He knew Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross. At 17 he went to Boston and worked in a grocery store for a year; then 3 years working at E. F. Newall department store in dry goods, then to New York and worked at dry goods House of A. T. Stewart; then to St. Augustine Florida for 3 years until 1848; he charted a North Carolina lumber schooner and went to San Tiago, Cuba and Chagres, for 8 years in clothing and provisions. He eventually got to Panama and to San Francisco on Aug 7, 1849. He went mining in Mokelumne river. He later bought a boat and sold fish. He was elected one of the first Board of Supervisors of Tuolomne county and kept a hotel and store at Time Spring. He then piloted different steamers. He then went to San Francisco and opened a wood yard on Sutter St. and then a store on Clay St.. He later developed mines making over a $100,000.2,16
Gen. Soc.California Pioneers

Author

  • Author: Frederick T. Houghton was the author of Title: Autobiography and Reminiscence of Frederick T. Houghton, Hornitos, 1901.
    Alternative Title: Institutional Records Digitization Project: Reminiscences of Early Pioneers: 1900-1904
    Contributor:
    Houghton, Frederick T 1825-1911 , creator
    Abstract:
    Autobiographies and Reminiscences of California Pioneers, p.109-121, Vol. 1. This is a typed transcript, bound into a volume, of the member's autobiographical reminiscence created as an institutional record for the Society of California Pioneers. The original handwritten version exists in the member's Biographical File. This reminiscence includes a reference to a photograph of the member in a set of bound volumes. It appears that the photographs in this set were dispersed throughout the regular photography collection, but the photographs referenced in the related materials may or may not be these same photographs. This reminiscence covers Houghton's life from 1849 to 1901and discusses his New England family and his early years. Houghton describes attending the 1852 funeral of Daniel Webster. En route to California Houghton stopped in Panama, and his stay there is described (during which time he suffered from a bout of Isthmus Fever as well as Cholera) as well as his adventures on the Chagres River. Named are all the Steamers Houghton piloted. Houghton names acquaintances and gives a description of his experiences in mining, politics, and commerce, offering the reader a sense of the daily life of the pioneer.
    Date:
    1901
    Subject:
    Houghton, Frederick T -- 1825-1911
    Webster, Daniel -- 1782-1852
    Rogue River Tribe.
    Pioneers -- California -- Biography
    Pioneers -- Oregon.
    Frontier and pioneer life
    Gold mines and mining
    Voyages to the Pacific Coast
    Indians of North American -- Oregon -- History
    California -- Biography
    California -- History -- 19th century.
    California -- Commerce -- History
    California -- Gold discoveries
    California, Northern.
    Angel's Camp (Calif.) -- History
    Tuolomne County (Calif.) -- History
    Rogue River Valley (Klamath County-Curry County, Or.)
    Note:
    Autobiography & Reminiscence of Frederick T. Houghton, Hornitos, 1901. The Society of California Pioneers
    Houghton was born in Sterling, Ma on April 15, 1825. His father, Samuel Houghton was prominent in the Whig party of Massachusetts. After school in Worcester, Ma., F.T. Houghton became interested in mercantile pursuits, C.W. Warren & Co. of Boston, A.T. Stewart & Co. of New York, and Venancio Sanchez & Co. of St. Augustine, Florida. With 6 other passengers, he sailed for California, via Panama (Jan. 1849) from St. Augustine. Houghton arrived in San Francisco on August 7, 1849 and immediately went to the big bar on the Mokelumne River, eventually employed as pilot for Captain Sutter on the first steamer on the San Joaquin River. Houghton was voted one of the first members of the Board of Supervisors for Tuolumne County, during which he was engaged in keeping a hotel and store at Tims Springs
    Type:
    Autobiographies.
    Physical Description:
    [13] p; 35 x 21 cm.
    Collection:
    The Society of California Pioneers collection of autobiographies and reminiscences of early pioneers
    Contributing Institution:
    Society of California Pioneers in 1901 at Hornitos, CA, USA.1
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt2199q2qq/
  2. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 380.
  3. [S235] U.S. Census, 1910 Soundex, Oakland, Alameda Co., CA, Film 527, Box 100, Vol. 5, E.D. 97, Sh. 225.
  4. [S235] U.S. Census, 1910 Soundex, Alameda Co., CA, Film 527, Box 100, Vol. 7, E.D. 118, Sh. 3.
  5. [S415] E-mail from Violette Elizabeth (Houghton) Voget, Dec. 12, 2000.
  6. [S235] U.S. Census, 1870 Soundex, Oakland, Alameda Co., CA, Box 68, p. 171, Ln. 13, dwl 67.
  7. [S1228] 1870 U.S. Federal Census , Oakland, Alameda, California; Roll: M593_68; Page: 171; line 13, dwl 645-615.
  8. [S1229] 1880 U.S. Federal Census , Hornitas, Mariposa, California; Roll: 68; Page: 160B; Enumeration District: 039.
  9. [S235] U.S. Census, 1880 Soundex, Alameda, Alameda Co., CA, Reel 13, Vol. 1, ED. 30, Sh. 2, Ln. 14.
  10. [S1229] 1880 U.S. Federal Census , Alameda, Alameda Co., CA, Reel 13, Vol. 1, ED. 30, Sh. 2, Ln. 14, dwl 16-16.
  11. [S235] U.S. Census, 1900 Soundex California, Box 75, Vol. 17, E.D. 33?, Sh. 1, Ln. 24.
  12. [S1230] 1900 U.S. Federal Census , Hornitos, Mariposa Co., California; Roll: T623 ; Enumeration District: 33; Sheet 1A; line 24, dwl 11-12.
  13. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , Rootsweb. Com, Book Indexes, Houghton Surname, Jan. 28, 2002.
  14. [S1231] 1910 U.S. Federal Census , Oakland Ward 2, Alameda, California; Roll: T624_70; Page: 10B; Enumeration District: 97;
    line 65, dwl 530-133-225.
  15. [S882] Ancestry.Com, online www.ancestry.com, http://interactive.ancestry.com/8639/007096958_01580
  16. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , Memoirs of Frederick T. Houghton: http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt2199q2qq/
  17. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 438.

John Houghton1

M, #8823, b. 21 November 1827

Family 1: Maria S. Bonney b. 26 Oct 1827, d. 10 Aug 1878

  • Marriage*: John Houghton married Maria S. Bonney on Nov 25, 1852 JWH: 16 Nov. 1853.2,5

Family 2: Catherine G. Hines b. 6 Jun 1836

Biography

NotableY
Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthNov 21, 1827Sterling, MA, USA, age 32 in 1860 census; age 42 in 1870 census; age 52 in 1880 census; Nov. 1827, age 72, in 1900 census2,3,4
MarriageNov 25, 1852JWH: 16 Nov. 18532,5
1860 Census1860Sterling, Worcester Co., MA, USA, age 32, farmer; 7 houses from father6
1870 Census1870Byron, Oxford Co., ME, USA, age 42, lumber merchant, property $20,000, $15007
Residence1872Houghton, ME, USA2
1880 Census1880Byron, Oxford Co., ME, USA, age 52, widowed, a farmer and hotel keeper8
MarriageMar 31, 18813,5
1900 Census1900Byron, Oxford Co., ME, USA, age 72, farmer3,9
BiographyHe went to California in 1848 and returned in 1851-1852. He was a farmer, postmaster, and landowner. He had an interest in Rumford Falls & Rangley Lakes RR. He married in Sterling and moved to Maine. He became quite wealthy and became a banker in Rumford Falls.10
Notablefounded the town of Houghton, ME (near Oxford, ME; no longer exists)
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 381 #1046.
  2. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 381.
  3. [S235] U.S. Census, 1900 Soundex Maine, Box 31, Vol. 14, E.D. 177, Sh. 12, Ln. 73.
  4. [S415] E-mail from Violette Elizabeth (Houghton) Voget, Dec. 12, 2000.
  5. [S415] E-mail from Ken Voget, Mar 30, 2001, based on document by John Houghton.
  6. [S1227] 1860 U.S. Federal Census , Sterling, Worcester Co., Massachusetts; Microfilm: M653; Page: 321, line 30, dwl 2654-2634.
  7. [S1228] 1870 U.S. Federal Census , Byron, Oxford, Maine; Roll: M593_550; Page: 92; line 32, dwl 26-25.
  8. [S1229] 1880 U.S. Federal Census , Byron, Oxford, Maine; Roll: T9_484; Family History Film: 1254484; Page: 82A; Enumeration District: 120; Image: sheet 17, line 47, dwl 10-10.
  9. [S1230] 1900 U.S. Federal Census , Byron, Oxford, Maine; Roll: 596; Page: 13B; Enumeration District: 177; FHL microfilm: 1240596; line 73, dwl 254-256.
  10. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , Memoirs of Frederick T. Houghton: http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt2199q2qq/

Elizabeth N. Houghton1

F, #8824, b. 6 June 1830

Family: George A. Litchfield

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
BirthJun 6, 1830Sterling, MA, USA, age 20 in 1850 census; age 29 in 1860 census3
ResidenceLunenburg, Worcester Co., MA, USA3
Marriage3
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 381 #1047.
  2. [S1226] 1850 U.S. Federal Census , Sterling, Worcester, Massachusetts; Roll: M432_343; Page: 195;
    line 18, dwl 300-312.
  3. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 381.

Delia Sophia Houghton1

F, #8825, b. 4 March 1835, d. 23 June 1836

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
BirthMar 4, 1835Sterling, MA, USA2,3
DeathJun 23, 1836Sterling, Worcester Co., MA, USA, dd2
BurialChocksett Burial Ground Cemetery, Sterling, Worcester Co., MA, USA, ae 1 d/o Samuel & Eliza
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 381 #1048.
  2. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 381.
  3. [S415] E-mail from Violette Elizabeth (Houghton) Voget, Dec. 12, 2000.

Nancy Josephine Moore1,2

F, #8826, b. 19 April 1844, d. 24 January 1919

Family: Frederick T. Houghton b. 15 Apr 1825, d. 17 Feb 1911

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthApr 19, 1844St. Louis, MO, USA, age 26 in 1870 census; age 36 in 1880 census; age 56 in 1900 census; age 66 in 1910 census; PA per 1920 census of son Lincoln3,4,5
MarriageMay 20, 1859JWH: 20 May 1844; mar 40 years in 1900 census6,2
1870 Census1870Oakland, Alameda Co., CA, USA, age 46, a patent boot mfr.5,7
1880 Census1880Alameda, Alameda Co., CA, USA, age 55, a miner8,9
Notebetween 1886 and 1887moved from Indian Gulch to Dean Colony with the hope of raising carrots, but was unable to get water, and moved back
1900 Census1900Calistoga, Napa Co., CA, USA, age 563,10
1910 CensusApr 22, 1910Oakland, Alameda Co., CA, USA, age 85, none4,11
DeathJan 24, 1919Berkeley, CA, USA
ParentsDJohn Thomas Moore 1811–1875 & Mary J Hickman 1811–1888; parents born in PA
AlertJWH gives md and first child 20 years apart;
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 380 #1045s.
  2. [S415] E-mail from Violette Elizabeth (Houghton) Voget, Dec. 12, 2000.
  3. [S235] U.S. Census, 1900 Soundex California, Box 75, Vol. 20, E.D. ?, Sh. 5, Ln. 20.
  4. [S235] U.S. Census, 1910 Soundex, Oakland, Alameda Co., CA, Film 527, Box 100, Vol. 5, E.D. 97, Sh. 225.
  5. [S235] U.S. Census, 1870 Soundex, Oakland, Alameda Co., CA, Box 68, p. 171, Ln. 13, dwl 67.
  6. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 380.
  7. [S1228] 1870 U.S. Federal Census , Oakland, Alameda, California; Roll: M593_68; Page: 171; line 13, dwl 645-615.
  8. [S235] U.S. Census, 1880 Soundex, Alameda, Alameda Co., CA, Reel 13, Vol. 1, ED. 30, Sh. 2, Ln. 14.
  9. [S1229] 1880 U.S. Federal Census , Alameda, Alameda Co., CA, Reel 13, Vol. 1, ED. 30, Sh. 2, Ln. 14, dwl 16-16.
  10. [S1230] 1900 U.S. Federal Census , Calistoga, Napa Co., California; Roll: T623 ; Enumeration District: 88; Sheet 5A; line 20, dwl 108-113.
  11. [S1231] 1910 U.S. Federal Census , Oakland Ward 2, Alameda, California; Roll: T624_70; Page: 10B; Enumeration District: 97;
    line 65, dwl 530-133-225.
  12. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 438.
  13. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , Rootsweb.Com, Houghton Surname, California Death Records, 1940-1997, Feb. 4, 2002.

Maria S. Bonney1

F, #8827, b. 26 October 1827, d. 10 August 1878

Family: John Houghton b. 21 Nov 1827

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
BirthOct 26, 1827Sterling, MA, USA, JWH: 26 Mar; age 32 in 1860 census; age 42 in 1870 census2,3
MarriageNov 25, 1852JWH: 16 Nov. 18532,4
1860 Census1860Sterling, Worcester Co., MA, USA, age 32, farmer; 7 houses from father5
1870 Census1870Byron, Oxford Co., ME, USA, age 42, lumber merchant, property $20,000, $15006
Residence1872Houghton, ME, USA2
DeathAug 10, 1878Byron, Oxford Co., ME, USA2
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 381 #1046s.
  2. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 381.
  3. [S415] E-mail from Ken Voget, June 21, 2000.
  4. [S415] E-mail from Ken Voget, Mar 30, 2001, based on document by John Houghton.
  5. [S1227] 1860 U.S. Federal Census , Sterling, Worcester Co., Massachusetts; Microfilm: M653; Page: 321, line 30, dwl 2654-2634.
  6. [S1228] 1870 U.S. Federal Census , Byron, Oxford, Maine; Roll: M593_550; Page: 92; line 32, dwl 26-25.

George A. Litchfield1

M, #8828

Family: Elizabeth N. Houghton b. 6 Jun 1830

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
ResidenceLunenburg, Worcester Co., MA, USA2
Marriage2
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 381 #1047s.
  2. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 381.

Alfred Augustus Houghton1,2,3,4

M, #8829, b. 6 March 1851, d. 28 October 1892

Family 1: Olive Chestnutwood b. 12 Aug 1852, d. 19 Nov 1873

Family 2: Caroline Garlinghouse b. 13 May 1856, d. 2 Sep 1894

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthMar 6, 1851Cambridge, Middlesex Co., MA, USA, age 9 in 1860 census; age 19 in 1870 census; age 29 in 1880 census; Leaming: March 56,3,7,8,9
Education1869Harvard College, Cambridge, Middlesex Co., MA, USA, for 1 year.10
1870 Census1870Harvard College, Cambridge, Middlesex Co., MA, USA, age 19, a college student11
NoteJul 25, 1870a law student12
Graduation1872Columbia Law School13
Marriage1872Corning, Steuben Co., NY, USA, at the home of Martha Ann Spaulding Garlinghouse, her mother6,14,8,15,16
OccupationCorning Glass; Buffalo Scale Works
MarriageMay 7, 1877Buffalo, Erie Co., NY, USA, at the home of Martha Ann Spaulding Garlinghouse, her mother;
w/2; MLM: 18766,17,18,19
1880 Census1880Hamburgh, Erie Co., NY, USA, age 29, a merchant9,20
WillJul 11, 1885Erie County Surrogate's Court Probate records include Alfred Augustus Houghton's last will and testament dated July 11, 1885, a list of materials in file #10737, an estate inventory, Schedule D: Appraisers Schedule, and a petition for Probate of the will filed November 3, 1892.13
DeathOct 28, 1892Corning, Steuben, NY, USA6,21,22,7,5
NewspaperOct 29, 1892Corning, Steuben Co., NY, USA, NY Times
Put a bullet through his temple
Corning NY, Oct. 29 --The people of this city were greatly shocked this morning to learn that Alfred A. Houghton of Buffalo, who was a guest at the residence of his brother Armory Houghton Jr. had committed suicide during the night, and that his body had been found lying in a lumber yard on the north side of the city.23
EstateNov 17, 1892Corning, Steuben Co., NY, USA, Everything left to widow who was named executrix.24,16
BurialProspect Lawn Cemetery, Hamburg, Erie, NY, USA, Moser: Alfred's brother Amory wanted Alfred to be buried at the Lakeville Memorial Cemetery in Buffalo with his 1st wife OIive Chestnutwood, but Alfred purchased a plot at the Prospect Lawn with Caroline insisted25,13
BiographyKatharine Hepburn, Me, p. 10: 'Alfred's first wife had died leaving him a daughter, Mary. He then married Caroline Garlinghouse. They had three daughters--Katharine, Edith Marion. Alfred and his wife were happy. They were financially comfortable. Not rich Not poor. He played the violin--she played the piano. They were interested in Robert Ingersoll, 'the great agnostic,' and went to all his lectures. They had abondoned the recognized church. Alfred was about twenty years older than Caroline. Apparently his relationship with his older brother Amory was complicated. Amory had fired him from the glassworks because he was always late. Then Alfred became the head of the Buffalo Scale Works. He was a moody fellow by nature and a victim of severe depressions. During one of these episodes, he was visiting Amory in Corning and he disappeared. He was found dead of a self-inflicted gun wound in the head, on the railway tracks. No note--nothing.'

B. Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 5: On Oct. 28, 1892, 41 year old Fred Houghton and his sister Nellie Abbott went for ride in Corning NY; he had been depressed for several months; he had had repeated depressions all his life. His brother Amory had brought him from West Hamburg, outside of Buffalo NY to stay at Corning to recover. He lived in a farmhouse near Lake Erie. He committed suicide by shooting himself in the forehead. His body was found across railroad tracks at Walker's Lumber Yard in Corning.
p. 8: spent a troubled childhood in Cambridge, MA, and Brooklyn, NY. Moody and lethargic, could harldy rouse himself from bed some mornings. Known as the "artistic" Houghton, he read books, studied philosophy, and played Schubert and Chopin on the violin. He dreaded following his brothers into the glass manufacturing business...Fred measured everything he did in terms of Amory's achievements, and felt inadequate in comparision..."; p. 10: "After withdrawing from Harvard, Fred worked briefly for Amory in Corning." [After Amory fired him for lateness, he studied law in Brooklyn, NY.]. His first wife, Olive, noted that he was obsessed at night, searching for intrudrers in their home. He stayed with his wife's family for 3 years after her death in 1873. He was hired into the management of Buffalo Scale Company by John Linen, his brother-in-law. He became vice-president. He owned a seven acre farm outside of Buffalo, NY. He lived in West Hamburg, NY. He continued to have chronic depressions. When John Linen was dying, Fred crumbled under the pressure of running the factory by himself and began talking of suicide. He ended up visiting his brother Amory at Corning and there committed suicide. He was an atheist.

Moser: Hobbies: Violinist, played in the Buffalo Symphony, Buffalo, NY..
Lived at: Prospect Street, Buffalo, NY. House no longer exists. Had a summer home at Athol Springs, Hamburg, NY overlooking Lake Erie. " The Farm" is on Lakeview Rd near Beach Ave.. Genealogy.com: Margo Moser

Edith's father, Alfred Houghton, was born in East Cambridge, Massachusetts on March 6, 1851.The Houghtons were of old New England stock.They became Capitalists in the glass making business during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods.The Houghtons moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1864 where Alfred's father and older brothers established a glass making company.Fred was a troubled child, moody and lethargic, sometimes hardly able to rouse himself from bed.He read books, studied philosophy, and played Schubert and Chopin on the violin.Alfredstarted undergraduate work at Harvard University (1969-70), leaving after his father's business failed.Later, he graduatedfrom Columbia University.After receiving his law degree from Columbia in 1872, Alfred went to work for a division of the Corning Glass Company in Brooklynfounded by his family and became an attorney for the family firm.Alfred was soon fired by his older brother Amory Houghton, Jr. because of his tardiness.At that time, he lived on State Street in Brooklyn.
In 1872, Alfred married Olive Chestnutwood.In her letters, Olive documented her husband's peculiar obsessions and night time terrors.When Olive became pregnant and was experiencing a bout of the ague (cold, hot and sweating fits) in Brooklyn, she moved to Buffalo to be with her parents.Olive died in 1873 when the infant Mary was three months old.At age 22,Alfred moved to Buffalo to take care of his child.They lived with Alfred's in-laws, Levy and Mary Jones Chestnutwood on East Eagle Street for three years.Mary Houghton was "adopted" by her maternal aunt, Olive's sister, Mary Francis Chestnutwood Linen ("Frankie") who had just lost a child.Mary Francis Houghton was raised first on Niagara Street and then, after the death of Alfred and Caroline, at the Linen's big Victorian home at 308 Summer Street, Buffalo N.Y.She never married.She knew her half sisters, Katharine, Edith, and Marion but was brought up in a more conservative old fashioned family than her younger half sisters.he early to mid 1870s was a period of great economic growth in Buffalo.John Linen, Frankie's husband, president of the large and successful Buffalo Scale Company hired Alfred Houghton to work with Levi Chestnutwood in managing the Buffalo Scale Company.Alfred Houghton prospered financially, rising to the position of secretary and then vice-president of the company.Alfred eventually became principal owner of the company, a member of Buffalo's industrial elite.During that period, Alfred's brother Amory, Jr. moved the Houghton family glass factory to Corning New York and renamed it the Corning Glass Works.
On May 7, 1877, Alfred Augustus Houghton married twenty year old Caroline Garlinghouse at the home of her widowed mother, Martha Anne Spaulding Garlinghouse (1818-1880).The brick house (built in the 1850s) is located at 216 Prospect Street, Buffalo, N.Y.The minister who performed the marriage was the Reverend L.B. Van Dyke, Rector of the St John's Grace Evangelical Church, Buffalo, New York.( I have pictures of the house.Marriage records are at the St. John's Grace Evangelical Church.)
Caroline's family had moved to Canandaigua, New York soon after the War of 1812 with Great Britain.At that time, the area was mostly woodland, broken here and there by a new home site.Transportation was limited to a few roads that were largely former Indian trails.Caroline's father, Leman Benton Garlinghouse (1814-1872), born in Canandaigua, was involved in the canal trade.Martha Spalding's family were Quakers who moved to the area from Rochester, New York.Very intelligent and forward thinking, in the vanguard of thinking following Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, they moved into "the burned out district" bringing the "reawakening" to the towns they lived in.After the death of her husband Caroline's mother, Martha Anne Spaulding Garlinghouse moved from Canandaigua to Buffalo where Caroline's brother Frederick was employed by the city of Buffalo as a civil engineer.
Following their marriage, Caroline and Alfred Houghton lived for a time with MarthaSpaulding Garlinghouse in Buffalo.Alfred was working for the Buffalo Scale Company.After Martha's death they moved to 329 Prospect Street (house no longer there).They spent the winters in Buffalo, where they were members of the Buffalo industrial elite.Caroline was active in the Women's Investigating Club where women discussed issues of the day with the goal of expanding the intellectual horizons of its members."Caroline was a woman unlike the majority of her social peers.She recognized the intellectual capabilities of women and sought to challenge herself academically.It would be a valuable lesson that she would impart to her daughters."(Information taken from a paper prepared by James Williams, 1993.)
The Houghtons also owned a seven acre summer home in Athol Springs, Hamburg, New York which overlooked Lake Erie.Alfred bought "the Farm" from Franklin Locke, a friend, a lawyer eight years older than Alfred.Franklin Locke had bought the Beach Estate on Lakeside Drive in Athol Springs and sold it in partitions.The Farm was located about 1-2 miles from Cloverbank where Alfred's sister Nellie Houghton Abbott lived during the summer with her husband George Abbott.Nellie was a favorite aunt of Edith, Katharine, and Marion Houghton. (I visited "the Farm" in 2001 with Katharine's granddaughter, Katharine Houghton Grant, my second cousin, and have pictures of the property overlooking Lake Erie.) Harry, the coachman, took Alfred to the Athol Springs train station every morning and picked him up at night.The family swam in Lake Erie, rode horses on the beach, and picked wild strawberries in the fields.The girls had their own pony cart and the first bicycles at the lake. However, recurrent, chronic depression continued to plague Alfred."

Moser: Alfred and Carrie followed the ideas of the noted free thinker Robert Ingersoll, who preached agnosticism and evolution.

"Alfred Houghton, was born in East Cambridge, Massachusetts on March 6, 1851. The Houghtons were of old New England stock. They became Capitalists in the glass making business during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. The Houghtons moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1864 where Alfred's father and older brothers established a glass making company.

Fred was a troubled child, moody and lethargic, sometimes hardly able to rouse himself from bed. He read books, studied philosophy, and played Schubert and Chopin on the violin. Alfred started undergraduate work at Harvard University (1969-70), leaving after his father's business failed. Later, he graduated from Columbia University. After receiving his law degree from Columbia in 1872, Alfred went to work for a division of the Corning Glass Company in Brooklyn founded by his family and became an attorney for the family firm. Alfred was soon fired by his older brother Amory Houghton, Jr. because of his tardiness. At that time, he lived on State Street in Brooklyn.

In 1872, Alfred married Olive Chestnutwood. In her letters, Olive documented her husband's peculiar obsessions and night time terrors. When Olive became pregnant and was experiencing a bout of the ague (cold, hot and sweating fits) in Brooklyn, she moved to Buffalo to be with her parents. Olive died in 1873 when the infant Mary was three months old. At age 22, Alfred moved to Buffalo to take care of his child. They lived with Alfred's in-laws, Levy and Mary Jones Chestnutwood on East Eagle Street for three years.

The early to mid 1870s was a period of great economic growth in Buffalo. John Linen, Frankie's husband, president of the large and successful Buffalo Scale Company hired Alfred Houghton to work with Levi Chestnutwood in managing the Buffalo Scale Company. Alfred Houghton prospered financially, rising to the position of secretary and then vice-president of the company. Alfred eventually became principal owner of the company, a member of Buffalo's industrial elite. During that period, Alfred's brother Amory, Jr. moved the Houghton family glass factory to Corning New York and renamed it the Corning Glass Works.

On May 7, 1877, Alfred Augustus Houghton married twenty year old Caroline Garlinghouse at the home of her widowed mother, Martha Anne Spaulding Garlinghouse (1818-1880). The brick house (built in the 1850s) is located at 216 Prospect Street, Buffalo, N.Y. The minister who performed the marriage was the Reverend L.B. Van Dyke, Rector of the St John's Grace Evangelical Church, Buffalo, New York. (Marriage records are at the St. John's Grace Evangelical Church.)

Following their marriage, Caroline and Alfred Houghton lived for a time with Martha Spaulding Garlinghouse in Buffalo. Alfred was working for the Buffalo Scale Company. After Martha's death they moved to 329 Prospect Street (house no longer there). They spent the winters in Buffalo, where they were members of the Buffalo industrial elite. (Information taken from a paper prepared by James Williams, 1993.)

The Houghtons also owned a seven acre summer home in Athol Springs, Hamburg, New York which overlooked Lake Erie. Alfred bought "the Farm" from Franklin Locke, a friend, a lawyer eight years older than Alfred. Franklin Locke had bought the Beach Estate on Lakeside Drive in Athol Springs and sold it in partitions. The Farm was located about 1-2 miles from Cloverbank where Alfred's sister Nellie Houghton Abbott lived during the summer with her husband George Abbott. Nellie was a favorite aunt of Edith, Katharine, and Marion Houghton. Harry, the coachman, took Alfred to the Athol Springs train station every morning and picked him up at night. The family swam in Lake Erie, rode horses on the beach, and picked wild strawberries in the fields. The girls had their own pony cart and the first bicycles at the lake.

"The Houghton children were exposed to the liberal beliefs of their parents that were contrary to the established mores of most of Victorian Buffalo." (Williams, 1993.) They did not attend church, as Alfred and Carrie were more interested in self exploration, following the ideas of the noted free thinker Robert Ingersoll who in the 1800's preached agnosticism and promoted controversial intellectual causes such as evolution.

On Friday, October 28, 1892, following several months of depression, Alfred Houghton committed suicide. He had been so troubled, that Carrie Houghton had sent him from the Farm to Corning to stay with his older brother Amory. On the afternoon of his death, Alfred's sister Nellie had taken him for a ride in her horse and buggy and dropped him off at Amory's massive stone house on Pine Street. Instead of going inside, Alfred walked down a path toward the railroad tracks near a lumber yard at the foot of Cedar Street and shot himself in the head with a gun that he must have been carrying with him all day.

Alfred is buried at Prospect Lawn Cemetery, Hamburg, New York (founded 1870) in a plot that he selected, under a stand of large trees. Erie County Surrogate's Court Probate records include Alfred Augustus Houghton's last will and testament dated July 11, 1885, a list of materials in file #10737, an estate inventory, Schedule D: Appraisers Schedule, and a petition for Probate of the will filed November 3, 1892." [1]
Sources

? https://longislandsurnames.com/getperson.php?personID=I0465&tree=HoytHawkins26,21,13
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 433 #1703.
  2. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 9.
  3. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 8.
  4. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 145 #5658, 175 #5644.
  5. [S1092] Hon. Harlo Hakes, Landmarks of Steuben County New York, p. 64.
  6. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 433.
  7. [S811] Unknown author Am. Biog. Libr.: Amer. Women, p. 364.
  8. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 145, 175.
  9. [S235] U.S. Census, 1880 Soundex, Hamburgh, Erie Co., NY, Reel 72, Vol. 18, ED. 94, Sh. 19, Ln. 45.
  10. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 9.
  11. [S1228] 1870 U.S. Federal Census , Cambridge, Middlesex Co., MA, Reel 623, p. 324, line 35, dwl 1152.
  12. [S1228] 1870 U.S. Federal Census , Brooklyn, Ward 17, Kings Co., NY; Roll: M593_958, Page: 204, line 30, dwl 765-1537.
  13. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/m/o/s/…
  14. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 10.
  15. [S1124] Bill and Martha Reamy, Erie Co. NY Obituaries, p. 131.
  16. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , Hadley/ Houghton/ Olmsted Family Tree (Owner: Jane Preziosi; JPrez123): http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/person.aspx
  17. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 12.
  18. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 175.
  19. [S1519] Dr Margaret Houghton Hooker PhD, Then and Now : A Family History, p. 39.
  20. [S1229] 1880 U.S. Federal Census , Hamburgh, Erie Co., NY, Roll: T9_827; Family History Film: 1254827; Page: 390C; Reel 72, Vol. 18, ED. 94, Sh. 19, Ln. 45, dwl 191-195.
  21. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 10.
  22. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 5.
  23. [S95] Newspaper, New York Times Archives: Oct 30, 1892.
  24. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 18.
  25. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 17.
  26. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 8-12.

Olive Chestnutwood1

F, #8830, b. 12 August 1852, d. 19 November 1873

Family: Alfred Augustus Houghton b. 6 Mar 1851, d. 28 Oct 1892

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthAug 12, 1852New York, New York Co., NY, USA2,3
Marriage1872Corning, Steuben Co., NY, USA, at the home of Martha Ann Spaulding Garlinghouse, her mother4,5,6,7,8
DeathNov 19, 1873Buffalo, Erie Co., NY, USA, in her father's house, age 219,7
ParentsDLevi Chestnutwood10
BurialForest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, NY, USA
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 433 #1703s.
  2. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn.
  3. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Aurora, Erie, New York; Roll: 1421; sheet 7B; Enumeration District: 366; line 95; dwl 162-184-192.
  4. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 433.
  5. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 10.
  6. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 145, 175.
  7. [S1124] Bill and Martha Reamy, Erie Co. NY Obituaries, p. 131.
  8. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , Hadley/ Houghton/ Olmsted Family Tree (Owner: Jane Preziosi; JPrez123): http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/person.aspx
  9. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 11.
  10. [S235] U.S. Census, 1880 Soundex, Buffalo, Erie Co., NY, Reel 72, Vol. 22, ED. 261, Sh. 16, Ln. 36.

Caroline Garlinghouse1

F, #8831, b. 13 May 1856, d. 2 September 1894

Family: Alfred Augustus Houghton b. 6 Mar 1851, d. 28 Oct 1892

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
BirthMay 13, 1856Canandaiqua, Ontario Co., NY, USA, age 24 in 1880 census; 28 in 18942,3,4
MarriageMay 7, 1877Buffalo, Erie Co., NY, USA, at the home of Martha Ann Spaulding Garlinghouse, her mother;
w/2; MLM: 18765,6,7,8
1880 Census1880Hamburgh, Erie Co., NY, USA, age 29, a merchant3,9
Immigrationafter 1892Bryn Mawr, Montgomery Co., PA, USA10
WillAug 15, 1894Hornellsville, NY, USA, No guardian designated for children. Amory Houghton, and her brother and cousin, Frederick Garlinghouse and Mack Smith were co-executors.11
DeathSep 2, 1894Hornellsville, NY, USA, at Hornell Sanitorium of stomach cancer; Moser: Buffalo, NY12,8
BurialProspect Lawn Cemetery, Hamburg, Erie, NY, USA
BiographyHepburn: "[after suicide of husband] Caroline was left with her three daughters to bring up. Then it was discovered that Caroline had cancer of the stomach. She knew that she was doomed to die in fairly short order. Caroline dreaded leaving her girls to be brought up by any of their available relatives, whom she considered hopelessly reactionary. She wanted her daughters to go to college. She visited Bryn Mawr College with my mother. She made arrangements for Mother to go there and made arrangements for Edith and Marion to go to Miss Baldwin's boarding school, almost next door to the college.' p. 13: 'When Caroline Garlinghouse died, she was thirty-four years old. She must have been a very strong character. My mother talked a lot about her: her beauty, her strength of character--her determination that the daughters get an education and live lives independent of the very dominating Amory Houghton Corning Glass group. Her credo: Go to college! Get an education."

B. Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 1: bought burial plot on Nov. 1, 1892 (Prospect Lawn Cemetery, section A, lot #12); she died 18 months after Fred; p. 25: she gave Amory control over her finances after Fred died.

When she died at 34, her 3 children were sent to live with one relative after another, with Amory overseeing their finances.

Moser: After Alfred's death, she sold the "Farm" in Hamburg, his stock in the Buffalo Scale Company, and turned their money over to Amory Houghton, her husband's brother for investment. He made her and the children account for every penny they spent.13,14
ParentsDLeman Benton Garlinghouse (1814 - 1872) & Martha Ann Spalding Garlinghouse (1818 - 1882); born in NY8
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 433 #1703s.
  2. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 34.
  3. [S235] U.S. Census, 1880 Soundex, Hamburgh, Erie Co., NY, Reel 72, Vol. 18, ED. 94, Sh. 19, Ln. 45.
  4. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , Hadley/ Houghton/ Olmsted Family Tree (Owner: Jane Preziosi; JPrez123): http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/person.aspx
  5. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 433.
  6. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 12.
  7. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 175.
  8. [S1519] Dr Margaret Houghton Hooker PhD, Then and Now : A Family History, p. 39.
  9. [S1229] 1880 U.S. Federal Census , Hamburgh, Erie Co., NY, Roll: T9_827; Family History Film: 1254827; Page: 390C; Reel 72, Vol. 18, ED. 94, Sh. 19, Ln. 45, dwl 191-195.
  10. [S1251] A. Scott Berg, Kate Remembered, P. 42.
  11. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 35.
  12. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 38.
  13. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 10.
  14. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 1, 25.
  15. [S811] Unknown author Am. Biog. Libr.: Amer. Women, p. 364.

Katharine Martha Houghton1,2,3

F, #8832, b. 2 February 1878, d. 17 March 1951

Family: Dr. Thomas Norval Hepburn M.D. b. 18 Dec 1879, d. 20 Nov 1962

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
NotableY
BirthFeb 2, 1878Corning, Steuben Co., NY, USA, age 2 in 1880 census; Feb 1878, age 22 in 1900 census; age 32 in 1910 census; age 41 in 1920 census5,6,4,7
1900 Census1900Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Montgomery Co., PA, USA, a student8,9
MarriageJun 6, 1904Christ Church, Baltimore, Baltimore Co., MD, USA5,10,11,12
NewspaperFeb 14, 1909New York, New York Co., NY, USA, NY Times published a letter to the editor from her.13
1910 Census1910Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, age 30, a physician in general practice14
1920 Census1920Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, age 46, a physician, 3 servants15
1930 Census1930West Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, home $100,00016
DeathMar 17, 1951Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, "--MLM states she was living in 1973"17,6
ObituaryMar 18, 1951New York, New York Co., NY, USA, MRS. HEPBURN DIES; MOTHER OF ACTRESS; Wife of Connecticut Surgeon Prominent for Her Work in Behalf of Birth Control Spoke in Legislatures
March 18, 1951, Sunday
BLOOMFIELD, Conn., March 17, (AP)--Mrs. Thomas N. Hepburn, mother of Katharine Hepburn, the actress, was found dead in bed today. She was widely known for her crusading leadership in the birth control movement. Her age was 73.18
BurialCedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, Entire family buried here
BiographyKatharine Hepburn, Me, p. 10: "By the time her mother died, Katharine was sixteen, Edith fourteen and Marion twelve. Katharine was filled with her mother's feeling about the future. She wanted to go to college, to Bryn Mawr. She wanted to lead her younger sisters in the right direction and was not about to let Uncle Amory boss her around. Uncle Amory, by the same token, was used to having his own way. He thought that girls should be girls and should go to finishing schools to learn to be ladies. These girls wanted an education -- to be independent. Everything seemed at a standoff. The girls wound up the winners only after Mother figured out the guardian step which really foiled Uncle Amory. Before that, the girls were sent to one relative after another to sort of "try out." They would move in determined to be charming and sweet BUT wildly noisy. They band on the floor above the living room. They would scream and yell at each other. Everyone wanted to get rid of them.
Then Mother realized that she was old enough to appoint her own guardian. Uncle Amory was the one who managed her money but he was not her legal guardian. She threatened to appoint a man very unfriendly to uncle Amory as their guardian, and forced his hand and got her way. She went to Bryn Mawr. The girls went to Baldwin and later they both went to Bryn Mawr. Just to give you a little idea of the atmosphere that Mother was born into, I'm going to insert here a letter from this same Uncle Amory to Mother in 1904. It gives you a good idea of the Uncle Amory who controlled her purse strings.

Corning, N.Y., Feb. 4, 1904
Dear Katharine,
I have your letter of February 1st, and note that you have, during the past seven years, been borrowing money of Mary Towle, until now it amounts to a thousand dollars, besides what you have paid her back from your salary. Your
income has always been ample, and you never ought to have borrowed any money, and Mary Towle did a great wrong in lending you any money, and Mary Towle did a great wrong in lending you any money. My opinion of you is the same as it always has been--that you are an extravagant, deceitful, dishonest, worthless person. You have squandered thousands of dollars and left your honest debts unpaid. But I do not think you are capable of comprehending the mistakes that you have made. Now that you are paying up Mary Towle, how would it do to pay the various accounts that you owe? When you see Tom, please tell him I do not think he could do worse. I enclose your draft for one thousand dollars, and have charged same to your account. I suppose you will endorse on the back of this draft--Pay to the order of Mary R. Towle, sign under it, Katharine M. Houghton, and then send the draft to Mary R. Towle.

disgusted
Your affectionate uncle
A. Houghton, Jr.

When you were a little girl and went into Buffalo and got trusted for some dry goods which you were not allowed to keep (they were returned) your father remarked "Kathie is a feather head." It is true. Kathie is a feather head; always has been, and doubtless always will be."

Leaming: p. 18: She helped found the Hartford Political Equality League; elected vice-president of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association in 1909; in 1911 she became the president of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association for one year; fought to close down houses of prostitution in Hartford, CT. In 1912 they bought (with sister Edith and Don) the summer home in Fenwick. In 1913 she regained the presidency of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association, which she held until 1917. She supported the violently militant British suffragette Mrs. Pankhurst. She attended the NAWSA convention in Washington DC in 1913, but did not join Alice Paul and sister Edith in the Congressional Union (the radical political offshot). She attempted to mediate between the NAWSA and the militants. Paul invited her to be on the CU board, but she turned her down. After the violence toward the Silennt Sentinels who marched before the White House in 1917 and the defeat of suffrage legislation in CT, she resigned as president of the CWSA. She agreed to be on the board of the Paul's National Women's Party (when Paul was imprisoned). She was an ardent Marxist supporter of Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution; Tom opposed. From then on she and Tom frequently fought over politics, but they had a strong relationship. She fought for the state ratification of the 19th Amendment in CT. In 1920, after the 19th Amendment was certified, she was asked to run for the U.S. Senate from CT. Her husband threatened divorce if she ran and she did not.
In 1921 their son Tom committed suicide by hanging himself. In 1923 she met Margaret Sanger (who had grown up in Corning NY) and joined forces with her to fight for women's right to legalize contraception. In 1929 she became legislative chairman of Margaret Sanger's National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control. Many considered Mrs. Hepburn and her sister Edith Hooker and Alice Paul to be the three women who had the best grasp of the federal legislative process.

MLM: Mrs. Houghton believes in the maximum of self-expression for her children and lets them do as they please. They startedd to pick out their own clothes at thirteen. She has a deep voice and a sense of social obligation, a Boston germ that led her to war on the white slave traffic and vice in Hartford. She has even picketed the White House in the matter of votes for women, but it is birth control that her fame rests. All of her children have the middle name of Houghton.

In Corning NY, there is a Margaret Sanger, Katherine Houghton-Hepburn Planned Parenthood Center.

Katharine Houghton Hepburn was a friend and colleague of Margaret Sanger. The actress Katharine Hepburn has said, "My mother came to the family planning movement through her work as an ardent suffragist. She knew that birth control was as essential to women's emancipation as the vote itself. As early as 1911, Mother launched a campaign for birth control in her Connecticut hometown. In 1923, she and some friends founded the Connecticut Birth Control League, which later became Planned Parenthood of Connecticut. And in 1928, she joined Margaret Sanger in building a new, controversial organization called the American Birth Control League. Today that organization is known as the Planned Parenthood Federation of America."


http://www.brynmawr.edu/hepburn/ahh.php


Bryn Mawr College
About The Center
About the Houghton Hepburns
Hepburn Medalists
Hepburn Fellows
KHHC Launch
Planning Committee
Kit and Children
     
Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center

Katharine Houghton Hepburn, Class of 1899 (1878-1951)
Katharine Martha Houghton and her sisters Edith (Class of 1901) and Marion (Class of 1906) attended Bryn Mawr College to fulfill a lifelong ambition of their mother Caroline for her daughters to be independent, self-reliant and exceptionally well educated women. After reading newspaper accounts of the appointment of M. Carey Thomas as president of the College in 1894, Caroline was determined to prepare her daughters to meet Bryn Mawr’s high standards.

Katharine Houghton '99 graduated from the College with an A.B. in history and political science and was awarded an M.A. in 1900 after a year of additional study in chemistry and physics. She married Thomas Norval Hepburn, M.D., in 1904 and the couple moved to Hartford, Conn., where her husband was starting his medical career as an intern at Hartford Hospital. They would go on to raise a family of six children.

Hepburn became an activist in the women's right-to-vote campaign after attending a lecture by British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst in 1907. In 1909, she co-founded the Hartford Equal Franchise League, which in 1910 joined with the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association, an affiliate of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. During her presidency, the CWSA eventually grew to include an estimated 30,000 members. Inspired by the arrest of suffragist pickets at the White House, Hepburn resigned from the CWSA in September 1917 and joined the National Woman's Party. Two months later, she was a member of NWP's National Executive Committee.

Hepburn also was an early, vocal advocate of birth control. In 1916, she joined the cause of her friend Margaret Sanger and helped to found the American Birth Control League, serving for many years as its national legislative chair. The league was the forerunner of what would become the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Hepburn ridiculed Connecticut's anti-birth-control statute as the "police-under-the-bed law," arguing that it prevented the poor but not the wealthy from receiving information about contraception - "for many poorer women," she said, "bearing children was simply an onerous duty, seriously affecting their health, welfare and psychological development." From the very beginning, Dr. Hepburn supported his wife's work for women's rights and was an early advocate of suffrage and birth control.

While best known for her activism in the suffrage and birth-control movements, Hepburn championed a wide range of women’s issues. They included educational and job opportunities, working conditions, child care, social welfare and women’s health. She and other suffragists fought to secure women’s right to vote so that they could pressure legislators to enact reforms in all these areas at the state and national levels.


KHH, Class of 1899
KHH, Class of 1928

She was heavily involved in the birth control movement during the 1930s when she appeard before a Congressional committee and a half dozen State Legislatures, including the Assemby of her native Connecticut, to plead that anti-birth control statutes be repealed. her birth control advocacy brought her into conflict with Msgr. Thomas S. Duggan, vicar general of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hartford and editor of the Catholic Transcript. The newspaper campaigned actively against her when she fought for repeal of Connecticut's anti-birth control statutes. In 1934 she carried the fight to Washington, where she appeard before a House Judiciary committee, seeking amendment of the penal laws to permit medically supervised dissemination of birth control information and advice. The next year, she was elected acting president of the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control during a four-month absence of Mrs. Margaret Sanger, the committee's president. In October of that year, she revealed that a birth control clinic had been operating in Hartford for more than two months. The state laws were drastic in opposition to this practice. Mrs. Hepburn was for six years the president of the Connecticut Women's Suffrage Association.

Woman's who's who of America :
HEPBURN, Katharine Houghton (Mrs. Thomas N. Hepburn), 133 Hawthorne St., Hartford, Conn.
Born Buffalo, N.Y., Feb. 2, 1878; dau. Alfred A. and Caroline (Garlinghorse) Houghton; ed. Bryn Mawr Coll., A.B., A.M., 1900; m. Baltimore,
Md., June 6, 1904, Thomas N. Hepburn; children: Thomas Hougbton, b. 1906; Katharine Houghton, 1909; Richard Houghton, 1911. Mem.
of Publication Com. of Conn. Soc. of Social Hygiene. Favors woman suffrage; pres. Conn. Woman Suffrage Ass'n, 1910-11 (now on its
Exec. Board); pres. of Hartford Equal Franchise League. Became interested in the suffrage question through studying the causes of prostitution
in this country and abroad.

Edwin Beck, 2013: But I live near the cemetery where these photos were taken, and I occasionally write a 500-word piece for the local newspaper -- one of which was about Katherine Hepburn's connection to this area. Her grandmother was born in nearby Buffalo -- in her grandparents' home (they were owners of Corning Glass) - and the family had a summer home along the shores of Lake Erie (which abuts our town) for several years.For certain KH would have heard the family stories about the great times in Athol Springs (the railroad stop in the Town of Hamburg NY) from her mother when she was a child. When CAroline developed cancer she was operated on by the same surgeon who tried to save President McKinley -- Dr. Roswell PArk - but to no successful outcome. She then sold the summer place, and created a trust to ensure that her daughters would attend Bryn Mawr - which they did -- and KH's mother did in fact graduate from there, married an MD, and was responsible for the creation of Planned Parenthood. Both of KH's grandparents apparently had burial plots here in Hamburg, which they've been occupying for quite some time. The g'pa, sadly enough, suffered from serious bouts of depression, and after leaving Hamburg for Corning, departed the train and walked a ways down the tracks -- and shot himself to death. Quite a story, eh? ....edwin beck PS -- I have a shot of a "Hooten" headstone, taken at Elm Lawn Cemetery in Tonawanda, NY, just a few miles north of Buffalo. I took it because I was rather amused by the name; but when I read your website I was made to realize that said name is a variation of "Houghton." Cheers!

Wikepedia:

Katharine Martha Houghton Hepburn (February 2, 1878 – March 17, 1951) was an American feminist social reformer and a leader of the suffrage movement in the United States. Hepburn served as president of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association before joining the National Woman's Party. Alongside Margaret Sanger, Hepburn co-founded the organization that would become Planned Parenthood.[2] She was the mother of Academy Award winning actress Katharine Hepburn.

Katharine Martha Houghton was born in Buffalo, New York on February 2, 1878 to Caroline Garlinghouse and Alfred Augustus Houghton, a member of the Houghton family of Corning Incorporated glass works. She was named in part after her maternal grandmother, Martha Ann Spaulding Garlinghouse. Katharine had two younger sisters, Edith (1879–1948) and Marion (1882–1968). When not in Buffalo, she and her family spent time at their property in the Athol Springs area of Hamburg, New York and in Corning, New York, the seat of the family business. In contrast to the conservative views of the Episcopal Houghton family, Caroline and Alfred were progressive freethinkers. Thus, Houghton and her sisters were raised in a household that championed women's education and the ideas of the agnostic orator Robert G. Ingersoll.

In 1892, Alfred Houghton committed suicide, leaving Caroline to raise their three children. Not long after, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Before her death in 1894, she inculcated her daughters, especially Katharine as the eldest, with the importance of a college education.

In her will, Caroline Houghton did not name a legal guardian for her daughters, preferring that they be independent to pursue their own aspirations. After her death the girls' education remained a point of contention between the sisters and their uncle, Amory Houghton, Jr. (1837–1909), the family patriarch and president of Corning Glass. While Amory believed young women belonged in finishing school, Katharine had absorbed her mother's insistence on a college education. Despite consistent opposition from the Houghton family, she was able to realize the promise she had made to her mother; Katharine Houghton graduated from Pennsylvania's Bryn Mawr College in 1899, with an A.B. in history and political science.[4] She earned her master's degree in chemistry and physics the following year, although biographer Barbara Leaming claims Houghton's degree was in art history.[5] She then briefly attended Boston's Radcliffe College. After completing preparatory studies at Baldwin School, her sisters, Edith and Marion, received degrees from Bryn Mawr in 1901 and 1906 respectively.

Houghton met Thomas N. Hepburn (1879–1962), a medical student at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, around 1903. Houghton spent that academic year teaching at the city's Calvert School before marrying Hepburn on June 6, 1904. Katharine Houghton and Thomas Hepburn had six children over the course of the following 16 years:

Thomas Houghton “Tom” Hepburn (1905–1921)
Katharine Houghton Hepburn (1907–2003), actress
Richard Houghton “Dick” Hepburn (1911–2000), playwright
Dr. Robert Houghton “Bob” Hepburn (1913–2007), urologist
Marion Houghton Hepburn Grant (1918–1986), historian, author, and social activist
Margaret Houghton “Peg” Hepburn Perry (1920–2006), librarian and farmer

Following their marriage, the Hepburns moved to Hartford, CT, where Dr. Hepburn completed his internship and residency specializing in urology at Hartford Hospital.[10] He maintained a practice at the Hospital for approximately 50 years. The family took up their primary residence in West Hartford, CT about 1928. The Hepburns also owned a home in Fenwick, CT, where they summered.

During the early 1930s, Hepburn home-schooled her two younger daughters, Marion and Margaret. Marion considered her mother “a natural-born teacher” who was “never happier than when introducing us children to some new book or idea.”

Hepburn became interested in the suffrage movement and consequently co-founded the Hartford Equal Franchise League in 1909. The following year, this organization was absorbed into the Connecticut Woman's Suffrage Association and became a branch of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. As president of the CWSA, Hepburn represented the state of Connecticut as part of a 1913 deputation that met with President Woodrow Wilson to "seek some expression of the President of his attitude on the woman suffrage question." Earlier that year, Hepburn had played host to famed British suffragette, Emmeline Pankhurst, who was visiting Hartford on a speaking tour. In 1917, Mrs. Hepburn resigned as CWSA president, declaring the Association to be "old-fashioned and supine." She instead joined Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party, a suffrage organization with a more aggressive reputation. In an oral history interview, Paul recalled Hepburn as "the unquestioned leader of the suffragists . . . in Connecticut." She was elected to serve as legislative chairman of the organization's National Executive Committee.

After the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, members of the Democratic Party asked Hepburn to run for the US Senate. Though Dr. Hepburn supported his wife's work, he did not wish that she campaign for office. She subsequently declined the offer.

Having concluded her suffrage work, Hepburn allied herself with birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, a New York native who remembered Hepburn as "the Kathy Houghton of my Corning childhood."[18] Together they founded the American Birth Control League. The League would eventually evolve into Planned Parenthood. Hepburn was elected chair of Sanger's National Committee for Federal Legislation on Birth Control. In her autobiography, Sanger wrote of Hepburn:

“In her long public career she had learned great efficiency and […] she never let our witnesses run over their time. Just as we were swinging along briskly she invariably tugged at a coat and passed over a little slip – ‘time up in one minute.’”

In 1934 Hepburn, Sanger, Congressman Walter Marcus Pierce, and others met with the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C. to rally on behalf of a bill which would allow doctors to disseminate contraceptive information. Among those speaking against birth control was popular Catholic radio priest Charles Coughlin. Coughlin's on-air ministry coupled with the fact that Hepburn's daughter Katharine had by that time established a film career in Hollywood, led newspapers to announce the event under the headline "Radio Father v. Movie Ma." Coughlin condemned prophylactics as communistic, and the House Committee eventually rejected the bill. Despite the defeat, TIME magazine afterward published an article noting the success of the Hepburn/Sanger birth control propaganda in yielding favorable local results for its cause.

Throughout her career, Hepburn gave numerous speeches in cities around the East Coast, including speaking engagements at Carnegie Hall. Her words were not always popular; editorials written against her in the Hartford Courant could be vitriolic enough to cause her friends to suggest she take the newspaper to court for calumny. At times, bricks or rocks were thrown through the windows of the Hepburn house.
Personal interests

A socialist sympathizer, Hepburn was a Marxist. Aside from her work and family, she enjoyed political debate, current events, Russian history, the works of William Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw, and golf. She did not care for movies, preferring instead the theatre. Her daughter Katharine mused that it was "curious that Fate gave her a movie-queen daughter."

“Don’t regret your daily chores. They are what keep you from going insane”, was a personal quotation. Family and friends familiarly referred to Hepburn as “Kit”.

Hepburn remained active in reform movements for the rest of her life, especially in the branches of women's health and birth control. She died unexpectedly of a cerebral hemorrhage on St. Patrick's Day, 1951, at the age of 73. Her ashes are buried in the Hepburn family plot at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford. In 1988, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America established the Katharine Houghton Hepburn Fund which provides emergency funding for the cause of reproductive rights. The regional Southern New England chapter of Planned Parenthood also sponsors a fund, the Hepburn Potter Society, "named in memory of two lifelong advocates of reproductive freedom." The Society offers membership to those who make a financial contribution. Hepburn was inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in 1994, included in the field of "Reformers." In 2006, her alma mater Bryn Mawr opened the Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center in honor of Hepburn and her daughter, actress Katharine Hepburn, who graduated in 1928. The Center "inspires Bryn Mawr students and graduates to make a meaningful impact on the world."

Katharine Martha Houghton Hepburn was portrayed by Frances Conroy in the 2004 film, The Aviator.


Born in Corning, Steuben Co., NY
Katharine was a daughter of Caroline Garlinghouse and Alfred Augustus Houghton.

Wife of Thomas Norval Hepburn, Mother of Richard, Thomas,Robert, Marion, Margaret, and actress Katharine Hepburn.

Hepburn co-founded the Hartford Equal Franchise League in 1913, a group that eventually numbered between 20,000-30,000 members. She later became President of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association, an affiliate of the NAWSA, actively speaking as a representative of women who were mothers as well as suffragists. In September 1917, inspired by the arrests of the White House pickets, she resigned from the Connecticut organization and joined the National Woman's Party. By November 1917 she was on the NWP's National Executive Committee, where she continued to make public appearances on behalf of the cause.

Died in West Hartford, Hartford Co., CT

She was a prominent leader in the fight for birth control. In 1916 she joined the American Birth Control League and for many years served as its legislative chair, speaking at rallies and before the U.S. Senate. This organization was the forerunner of today's Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Died in West Hartford, Hartford Co., CT


Katharine Martha (Kit) Hepburn formerly Houghton
Born 2 Feb 1878 in Buffalo, Erie, New York, United Statesmap
Ancestors ancestors
Daughter of Alfred Augustus Houghton and Caroline (Garlinghouse) Houghton
Sister of Marion Jeanette (Houghton) Mason     
Wife of Thomas Norval Hepburn — married 6 Jun 1904 in Baltimore, Maryland, United Statesmap
Mother of Thomas Houghton Hepburn, Katharine Houghton Hepburn, Richard Houghton Hepburn, Robert Houghton Hepburn, Marion Houghton (Hepburn) Grant and Margaret Houghton (Hepburn) Perry
Died 17 Mar 1951 in West Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut, United Statesmap
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Activists and Reformers poster
Kit (Houghton) Hepburn was a part of the Suffragette Movement.
Biography

Katharine Houghton Hepburn "co-founded the Hartford Equal Franchise League in 1913, a group that eventually numbered between 20,000-30,000 members. She later became President of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association, an affiliate of the NAWSA, actively speaking as a representative of women who were mothers as well as suffragists. In September 1917, inspired by the arrests of the White House pickets, she resigned from the Connecticut organization and joined the National Woman's Party. By November 1917 she was on the NWP's National Executive Committee, where she continued to make public appearances on behalf of the cause."[1] She was also co-founder, along with Margaret Sanger, of the American Birth Control League, which eventually evolved into Planned Parenthood.[2]

Katharine Martha Houghton, nicknamed "Kit," was born on 2 Feb 1878 in Buffalo, Erie, New York, daughter of Alfred Houghton and Caroline Garlinghouse.[3] Her father committed suicide in 1892 when Katharine was 14 years old. Two years later, her mother died.

Katharine was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College in 1899, earning an A.B. in history and political science. She earned a master's degree in chemistry and physics the follow year. She also attended Boston's Radcliffe College.[4]

She married Thomas Norval Hepburn, who later became a physician, on June 6, 1904 in Baltimore, Maryland. The following announcement appeared in the Baltimore American the day after their marriage:[5]

"An interesting marriage of yesterday was that of Miss Katharine M. Houghton, daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. A. A. Houghton, of Buffalo, N.Y., to Mr. Thomas Norval Hepburn, son of Rev. and Mrs. S. S. Hepburn, of Accomac county, VA. The bride is an M.A. and a B. A. of Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. During the past year she has been an instructress at the Calvert School for Girls, in this city. The groom is a graduate of Randolph-Macon College, in Virginia, and is now a student in the Medical School of the Johns Hopkins University."

"The ceremony was performed at 4:30 o'clock at the Christ Protestant Episcopal Church, by Rev. S. S. Hepburn, father of the groom, assisted by Rev. Percy Wroth. The bride was given away by her guardian, Mr. Houghton, Jr. of Corning, N.Y. [...] The maid of honor was Miss Edith Houghton, of Buffalo, a sister of the bride, and the bridesmaids were Miss Harlan Houghton, another sister, and Miss Mary Towle, of Boston. [....] Mr. Lloyd Hepburn, of Virginia, brother of the groom, was best man. [...] Mr. and Mrs. Hepburn will go abroad for their wedding trip, spending the summer in Switzerland, Germany and Italy. On their return in the fall Mr. Hepburn will resume his studies at the Johns Hopkins, where he expects to graduate next June."

Katharine died on 17 Mar 1951 in W. Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut at the age of 73 after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage.[7]

Death Notice:[8]

Actress's Mother Dies Suddenly

Bloomfield, Conn., March 17--Mrs. Thomas N. Hepburn, mother of actress Katharine Hepburn, was found dead in bed Saturday, 17 years to the day after her daughter was awarded the highest honor in the motion picture industry.

Mrs. Hepburn, widely known for her crusading leadership in the birth control movement, was discovered by her husband, Dr. Thomas N. Hepburn. Earlier, it had been incorrectly reported that Mrs. Hepburn had been found by her actress-daughter.

Dr. Hepburn immediately notified Katharine, in nearby Hartford, where she had been resting following a road tour with "As You Like It."

It was just 17 years ago ---March 17, 1934, that Miss Hepburn was chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as the best actress for the preceding year.

Findagrave:

Hepburn co-founded the Hartford Equal Franchise League in 1913, a group that eventually numbered between 20,000-30,000 members. She later became President of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association, an affiliate of the NAWSA, actively speaking as a representative of women who were mothers as well as suffragists. In September 1917, inspired by the arrests of the White House pickets, she resigned from the Connecticut organization and joined the National Woman's Party. By November 1917 she was on the NWP's National Executive Committee, where she continued to make public appearances on behalf of the cause.

She was a prominent leader in the fight for birth control. In 1916 she joined the American Birth Control League and for many years served as its legislative
chair, speaking at rallies and before the U.S. Senate. This organization was the forerunner of today's Planned Parenthood Federation of America.5,19,20,6,21,22
NotableKatherine Martha Houghton (1878-1951) was a birth control and Suffrage movement leader and mother of Katharine Hepburn, the actress. She joined her friend Margaret Sanger in building the American Birth Control League (today it is Planned Parenthood Federation of America).
NoteHoughton name pronounced HO-ten, not How-ten
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 498 #2707.
  2. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 9.
  3. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 175 #8472, 183 #8261.
  4. [S235] U.S. Census, 1880 Soundex, Hamburgh, Erie Co., NY, Reel 72, Vol. 18, ED. 94, Sh. 19, Ln. 45.
  5. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 498.
  6. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 183.
  7. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , Hadley/ Houghton/ Olmsted Family Tree (Owner: Jane Preziosi; JPrez123): http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/person.aspx
  8. [S235] U.S. Census, 1900 Soundex, Lower Merion Twp, Montgomery Co., PA, Reel 221, Vol. 139, E.D. 295, S. 3, Ln. 36.
  9. [S1230] 1900 U.S. Federal Census , Lower Merion, Montgomery Co., Pennsylvania; Roll: T623, Enumeration District: 295, Sheet: IIIB; line 86.
  10. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 115.
  11. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 175, 183.
  12. [S95] Newspaper, New York Times Archives: June 7, 1904.
  13. [S95] Newspaper, New York Times Archives: Feb 14, 1909.
  14. [S1231] 1910 U.S. Federal Census , Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, p. 132, ED 204, SD 29, sheet 18, line 5, dwl 133-109-240.
  15. [S1232] 1920 U.S. Federal Census , Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, ED 115, SD 1, p. 3A, line 50, dwl 353.
  16. [S235] U.S. Census, 1930 US Census, West Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, ln 3, dwl 201-34-96, ED 3-222 SD 2 , p. 6A.
  17. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 268.
  18. [S95] Newspaper, NY Times Archives: Houghton.
  19. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 10, 18.
  20. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 135.
  21. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about/PHOTOALB/HEPBURN.HTM
  22. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , http://www.brynmawr.edu/hepburn/ahh.php

Dr. Thomas Norval Hepburn M.D.1,2

M, #8833, b. 18 December 1879, d. 20 November 1962

Family 1: Katharine Martha Houghton b. 2 Feb 1878, d. 17 Mar 1951

Family 2: Madeline Santa Croce b. 1901, d. 1990

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthDec 18, 1879Hanover, VA, USA, age 30 in 1910 census; age 46 in 1920 census3
GraduationRandolph-Macon College, Ashland, VA, USA, M.A.3,4
MarriageJun 6, 1904Christ Church, Baltimore, Baltimore Co., MD, USA5,6,7,8
Educationafter Jun 6, 1904Heidelburg, Germany, Prof. Czherney's surgical fellowship9
Occupationa physician/surgeon (urologist)
1910 Census1910Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, age 30, a physician in general practice10
1920 Census1920Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, age 46, a physician, 3 servants11
1930 Census1930West Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, home $100,00012
Marriage13
BurialCedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, Entire family buried here
WillDivided property between widow, son Robert and Kate.14
DeathNov 20, 1962Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, age 8215,13
BiographyKatharine Hepburn, Me, p. 14: "He was the son of Reverend Sewell Snowden Hepburn and Selina Lloyd Powell. He was the youngest of their children...They lived in Virginia and also had a farm near Chestertown, Maryland."; p. 16: "Dad went to Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and took a B.A. and an M.A. He went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to study medicine...offered several good jobs in New York hospitals but he thought New York a poor place to live...moved to Hartford...lived opposite the Hartford Hospital where Dad was an intern and then a resident."

Leaming: He was a surgeon in Hartford, CT; in 1910 he and Kate helped to found the Connecticut Society of Social Hygiene (to fight venereal disease spread and prostitution); Tom was elected to the executive board of the American Social Hygiene Association; both were interested in eugenics (despite their own family histories of depression (hers) and venereal disease and tics (his)) Per Barbara Leaming, in "Katharine Hepburn": a domineering man who drove his children, especially his eldest son, to strive for physical and mental perfection. Hepburn's aunt, the suffragette Edith Hooker, long criticized Dr. Tom Hepburn's child-rearing as draconian and as a result, he could not acknowledge his son's death as suicide. When he insistedd that the hanging had instead been a botched joke (despite the police report that the boy had done "hard work to die"), Katharine agreed to his version. The family never discussed Tom's death again.

Married secondly, Madeline Santa Croce (known as Santa), one of his nurses, months after death of his first wife.

B. Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 0: Father was Rev. Sewell Stavely (Hepbron) Hepburn (1845-1932), an Episcopalian minister, and Selina ("Nina") Lloyd Powell (1842-1918)

Medical internship at Hartford Hospital; Don Hooker offered him the presidency of the American Social Hygiene Association, but he turned it down in order to specialize in urological surgery. In 1915 his lawyer brother Charlie Hepburn committed suicide (by jumping from his apartment window). Soon after the suicide of his son Tom, his brother Sewell committed suicide in 1921.

MLM: of Scottish descent; a prominent surgeon, at Hartford Hospital and consultant to a dozen others. He is handsome in a hard, chisled way, of medium height and athletic build. His daughter Katherine takes after him in appearance and personality. Inordinately fond of golf - when he wins, and loves to display the ancent set of clubs with which these feats were accomplished. Like all Hepburns, he will struggle desperately before being beaten. Long after nightfall, Hepburns can be found climbing over the fence that separates their land from a gold course (theirs, on Bloomfield Avenue), arguing fiercely about a drive that vanished into darkness. The doctor's pride extends to such varied accomplishments as his chess game and his self-acknowledged financial wizardry. He will take no advice from brokers. (Mary Stuart's tempestuous lover was a Hepburn, the Earl of Boyhwell). All Hepburns are slightly pink, love to talk with that constant stream of intellectual visitors.

He bought multiple houses in Hartford, CT, and in Fenwick, CT (which was destroyed by the 1938 hurricane and rebuilt by his daughter Katherine).

According to Powell Families of Virginia and the South by Silas Lucas pp 307-331, Katharine Hepburn descended from Walter Powell of Accomack Co., VA. "He is found being transported to Va in the year 1643.....and then about 1671 moved to Somerset Co., MD."


Walter Powell b. at least by 1622 m. Margaret Berrie(Berry) >
William Powell b June 12, 1673 d. 1715 m. Elizabeth Lane >
William Powell Jr b. c1700 d. 1787 m. Eleanor Peyton >
Lt Col Leven Powell b. c 1737 d. Aug 23, 1810 m. Sarah Harrison >
Cuthbert Powell b. Mar 4, 1775 d. Mar 8, 1849 M. Catherine Simms >
Charles Leven Powell m. Selina Lloyd >
Selina Lloyd Powell b. Dec 16, 1842 d. Mar 5, 1918 m. Sewell Stavely Hepburn D.D >
Thomas Norval Hepburn, M.D. b Dec 18, 1879 d. Noc 20, 1961 m. Katharine Martha
Houghton >

NY Times:
Dr. Hepburn had been head of the surgical staff at Hartford Hospital. He was a founder of the American Social Hygiene Association, and been president of the Connecticut Social Hygiene Society. A charter member and former president of the New England section of the American Urological Association, he had also been chariman of the board of trustees of the Hartford County Medical Society. Dr. Hepburn was a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a member of the New England Surgical Society, the American Board of Urology and the American Medical Association. He wrote many journal articles.


Birth: Dec.18, 1879, in Richmond, Hanover County, Virginia

Thomas was the son of Dr. Sewell Snowden Hepburn and Selina Lloyd Powell.

He married Katharine Martha Houghton on June 6, 1904.

He was a successful urologist who fought for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.

Death: Nov. 20, 1962, in West Hartford, Hartford Co., Connecticut16,17
ParentsDSamuel Sewell Stavely Hepburn 1845–1932 & Selina Lloyd Powell Hepburn 1842–1918
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 498 #2707s.
  2. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 14.
  3. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 28.
  4. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 97.
  5. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 498.
  6. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 115.
  7. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 175, 183.
  8. [S95] Newspaper, New York Times Archives: June 7, 1904.
  9. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 116.
  10. [S1231] 1910 U.S. Federal Census , Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, p. 132, ED 204, SD 29, sheet 18, line 5, dwl 133-109-240.
  11. [S1232] 1920 U.S. Federal Census , Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, ED 115, SD 1, p. 3A, line 50, dwl 353.
  12. [S235] U.S. Census, 1930 US Census, West Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, ln 3, dwl 201-34-96, ED 3-222 SD 2 , p. 6A.
  13. [S95] Newspaper, New York Times Archives: 1962.
  14. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 375.
  15. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 330.
  16. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, 14.
  17. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 170.

Amory Houghton Jr1,2,3,4

M, #8834, b. 30 October 1837, d. 5 November 1909

Family: Ellen Ann Bigelow b. 27 Sep 1840, d. 5 May 1918

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
NotableY
BirthOct 30, 1837Cambridge, Middlesex Co., MA, USA, age 23 in 1860 census; age 33 in 1870 census; age 41 in 1880 census;Oct 1837, age 62 in 1900 census; MLM: Bolton5,6,7,8,9
Notebetween 1854 and 1857a dealer in paint oils and varnish. He joined Union Glass in 1857.
Occupation1860clerk
MarriageJun 19, 1860Cambridge, Middlesex Co., MA, USA, JWH: Bolton MA5,8,4,10,11
Immigration1868Corning, Steuben Co., NY, USA12
1870 Census1870Corning, Stueben Co., NY, USA, age 33, glass manufactr, personal property $1500-100013
1880 Census1880Corning, Steuben Co., NY, USA, age 41, a glass manufacturer; and 2 servants14,15
OfficeFeb, 1881ran as a no-license candidate for the excise board, on a Temperance slate, but lost.16
1900 Census1900Corning, Steuben, NY, USA, age 62, glass manufactorer; 224 Cedar St; with a nurse and 2 servants6,17
DeathNov 5, 1909Corning, Steuben Co., NY, USA, at home, age 725,18,8,19
ObituaryNov 7, 1909New York, New York Co., NY, USA, NY Times: Amory Houghton, Jr. a prominent glass manufacturer, formerly of Brooklyn died in Corning, N. Y., on Friday, after an illness of several months, in his severy-second year. He was born in CAmbridge, Mass., and his father founded the Union Glass Company in that State in 1851. In 1864 Amory Houghton, Sr., moved to Brooklyn, where he owned the Brooklyn Flint Glass Works. The Houghton glass manufactury was subsequently moved to Corning, N.Y., and became one of the greatest in the country. It had been managed by Amory Houghton, Jr., since 1872, and made him one of the wealthiest men in Western New York. He leaves a wife and four children. One of his daughters is the wife of ex-State Senator William J. Tully.19
BurialHope Annex Cemetery, Corning, Steuben Co., NY, USA, in the family plot20
NoteName Amory was pronounced AM-ree, with a short "a".21
BiographyHakes, Landmarks of Steuben Co. NY, p. 64-65: "Amory Houghton, Jr., eldest son of Amory and Sophronia (Oakes) Houghton, was born at Cambridge, Mass., on the 20th day of October, 1837. He was educated at Cambridge, and was graduated from the High School in 1854. Earlier, when ten years of age, he also attended a private boarding school at Ellington, Conn., where he remained for three years. His first business engagement was in Boston, Mass., in 1854, with Lawson Valentine, a dealer in paints, oils and varnishes. After three years with Mr. Valentine, our subject became connected, in 1857 with the glass industry in which his father was engaged at Somerville, Mass., and devoted his attention to experiments in the composition and manufacture of the various kinds of glass. He had a well arranged laboratory in which he prosecuted his studies and experimental work, and the knowledge acquired at that time proved of great value in later years.
After the purchase of the Brooklyn Flint Glass Company's Works by his father in 1864, Mr. Houghton, Jr., moved to Brooklyn, taking a small interest in the enterprise, and becoming one of the stockholders in the incorporated company. Still later, on the removal to Corning in 1868, he came to the then village, and continued his connection with the Corning Flint Glass Company throughout the three years of its existence; and after disaster had overtaken the company and the works had been sold to Nathan Cushing, of Boston, Mass., the new owner placed them in charge of Amory Houghton, jr., with direction to continue their operation, although the supply of ready capital was indeed meagre and the prospect of success exceedingly doubtful. However, Mr. Houghton started the smaller of the two furnaces and soon put the works in running order, using every possible economy, yet constantly in need of ready money to pay the help. This account, above all others, he insisted upon paying regularly. Having introduced several specialties, and operating upon a very economical basis, the close of the year showed a profit for the owner. In 1872 the manager purchased the plant on credit, and the name of Amory Houghton, jr., proprietor, became known to Corning and to the trade throughout the country. The works were constantly in operation under his sole proprietorship for a period of three years, when, in 1875, the Corning Glass Works was incorporated, with $50,000 capital, and with Amory Houghton, jr., president and treasurer; Charles F. Houghton, vice-president, and Henry P. Sinclaire, secretary. The company formed in 1875 has continued to the present time.
In some respects Amory Houghton, jr., is the fair reminder of his father. That ever dominant trait--firm determination of character--having been transmitted from sire to son, and its best results are seen in the present prosperous condition of the Corning Glass Works. We pay no fulsome compliment to our subject when we say that the successful re-establishment of the Glass Works upon a secure and profitable basis was due to his personal effort, energy and determination. Business men knew him to be straightforward and honest and although his resources were known to be limited gave him both credit and cash without asking security.
Naturally, an earnest business man is constantly engaged in his personal affairs, yet Mr. Houghton has found time to interest himself in all public measures looking to the welfare of Corning and its people. Reference to the city history will show that he has been connected with several departments of the municipal government, while the public knows him to be a liberal contributor to all worthy causes. In politics he is a Republican, and essentially a protectionist. He was a Garfield elector in 1880. Although brought up under Congregationalist influences, he has been for many years a regular attendant at Christ Episcopal church, and, since 1875, one of the vestry. The present splendid church edifice was in large measure the result of the generosity of Mr. Houghton and other members of his family. Other churches, too, and other good causes have been the recipients of his liberality and public spiritedness.
In 1860, on the 19th day of June, Amory Houghton, jr., was married to Ellen Anne Bigelow, daughter of Alanson Bigelow, of Cambridge, Mass. Of this marriage five children have been born, four of whom are now living, two sons and two daughters. His sons have been for several years connected with the works--Alanson B. in the selling department, and Arthur A. in the manufacturing department."

Hakes, p. 40: " Houghton, Amory, jr., was born in Cambridge, Mass., in 1837, and was educated in Cambridge and in 1854 began his business career, being in the paint, oil and varnish business in Boston for three years. He then became connected with the Union Glass Works of Somerville, Mass., which his father had built in 1852. From 1864 to 1868 he was with the Brooklyn Flint Glass Works, which concern moved to Corning in 1868, his father, Amory Houghton, being the founder. In 1871 Amory Houghton, jr., took the management of the business and purchased it in 1872. In 1875 an organization was effected, with A. Houghton, jr., president, Charles F. Houghton, (a brother), vice-president, and H. P. Sinclaire, secretary, which remains unchanged to the present time. Amory Houghton, the father, was a native of Bolton, Mass. of old English stock, and died in 1882. In 1860, A. Houghton, jr., married Ellen Anne Bigelow of Cambridge, Mass., by whom he had five children. He was a Garfield elector at Albany, and has been vestryman in Christ church since 1875."

Matthews: a Republican presidential elector for James A. Garfield in 1880 and ran unsuccessfully as a temperance candidate for the Corning Excise Board.

JWH, Houghton Genealogy: "He attended school at Ellington, Conn., and subsequently the high school at Cambridge, Mass., from which he graduated in 1854. Spent three years with Lawson Valentine [first cousin Lucy's husband] in the varnish, paint and oil business in Boston, after which he was connected with the Union Glass Company, which his father had founded in Somerville, Mass. In 1868, the Brooklyn Flint Glass Works were induced to move to Corning, N.Y. The company was reorganized, Amory, Jr., taking $75,000 in stock, and also bringing from Brooklyn about one hundred regular and skilled employees. In 1871, disaster came and the business was sold to Nathan Cushing of Boston, who placed in charge of it, as manager, Amory Houghton, Jr. In 1872, the new manager bought the establishment. In 1875, the Corning Glass Works was incorporated with $50,000 capital, and with the following officers: Amory Houghton, president and treasurer; his brother, Charles F., vice-president. Since 1875, Amory, Jr., had continued as head of the concern and one of its largest stockholders. Under his management the Corning Glass Works grew and thrived, the plant developing year by year, and frequent additions being made until now it is one of the largest glass manufacturing establishments in the country. He was ever a student. As a boy in his father's factory he devoted his attention to experiments in the composition and manufacture of the various kinds of glass and in time there was no detail of the business in which he was not an adepts. He was a man of great energy and sagacity. For years he had been the foremost contributor in Corning to worthy causes. He was a rugged type of man with an inflexible standard of integrity. In business as in private life he hewed to an unswerving line of honor and honesty and uprightness. He was a regular attendant at Christ's Episcopal Church and since 1875 one of the vestry. he was a member of the school board, and many years its president."

Katherine Hepburn, Me, p. 9-10: "Alfred Houghton was the younger brother of Amory Houghton, who was the head of the Corning Glass Company. It started in Cambridge, Massachusetts, moved to Brooklyn and ended in Corning, New York."

See nasty letter from him to Katharine M. Houghton, his niece.

B. Leaming, Katherine Hepburn, p. 8: "Amory, Jr., in his late twenties, was already their father's partner at the Brooklyn Flint glass Company when Fred was still a schoolboy...Shrewd and undeniably brilliant as a businessman, Amory was famous for his lacerating tongue. He took pleasure not just in winning, but in mocking and humiliating his adversaries, including business associates and family members who opposed him...The family pinned its hopes on Amory, Jr. when Nathan Cushing, the new owner [of the Corning Glass Works], appointed him manager...By 1872 Nathan Cushing agreed to allow Amory to return the factory to family hands by purchasing it on credit. He was raised as a congregationalist, and was later in the Episcopalian Church and served as vestryman at Christ Church in Corning."

A vestryman for 34 years, teetotaler, who liked fast carriage horses and competitive billiards. Heavily involved in Christ Church (Episcopal) and the Board of Education. He served as town councilman in Cambridge and as a district alderman during the Civil War.

Matthews, p. 15: "The glass business was a family affair, and Amory Houghton's protege was his eldest son, Amory Jr., Alanson's father. During the Civil War the Houghtons sold Union Glass for a small fortune and moved to New York, where they invested unwisely in the Brooklyn glass industry. In 1868, after losing considerable money, the family was uprooted again for a fresh start in Corning, a small town in western New York. With the help of local boosters, they built the Corning Flint Glass Works. This new company had to struggle from the outset. Indeed, it fell into bankruptcy in 1870, essentially sending grandfather Houghton into retirement. Within two years, however, Amory Jr. and his younger brother Charles had managed to reacquire the firm on credit and organized its gradual revival."

Nathan P. Cushing, a Boston financier, bought the Corning Glass Works in 1871. He made Amory Jr. the manager. By May 1872, Amory Jr. and Charles bought the plant back from Cushing.

Known for being "crusty" and firing workers on spot. Had a difficult relationship with his youngest brother Alfred. Katherine Hepburn, his granddaughter, accused him of firing Alfred for always being late.

In 1866, E. B. Hungerford of the Village of Corning patented a glass window blind that served as an inside shutter. He approached several glass companies about manufacturing the blind, and eventually in 1868 the Brooklyn Flint Glass Works, owned by the Houghton family, moved to Corning and founded a new glass plant to manufacture Hungerford’s invention Today Corning Inc. is known as the largest company (#252 in the Fortune 500 companies) located in the smallest town in America. The company is still led by members of the Houghton family. Between 1964 and 1986 Amo Houghton served as the Company’s fifth CEO and was succeeded by his brother James when Amo began to represent the Corning region in the U.S. Congress.

The Houghton family of Corning Glassworks played an important role in the establishment of the new Corning Community College campus. Arthur Houghton offered his home (Houghton House) as an intermediate facility for the College, the land on which the campus was built, and a residence adjacent to the campus, which has been used by College presidents as a home. The Arthur Houghton Library on the campus honors his early contributions.

A History of Steuben County, New York, and its people by Irvin W. Near, Vol. II:

Amort Houghton, Jr. — A publication of this kind exercises its most important function when it pays tribute to the life and labors of a distinguished citizen. Amory Houghton, Jr., rose to
prominence and prosperity through his own well directed efforts, stood exponent of the most loyal citizenship, and the memory of his noble personality will always be cherished and venerated in the city of Corning, to whose civic and commercial prestige he contributed in most generous measure. Measured by its beneficence, its rectitude, its productiveness, its unconscious altruism and its material success, the life of the late Amory Houghton, Jr., counted for much, and it is not the name alone but the man himself that it is hoped this brief article may reveal, and that a tribute of honor may be perpetuated where honor is well due.

Amory Houghton, Jr., was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 20th of October, 1837, and his death occurred on the 5th of November, 1909. He was the eldest son of Amory and Sophronia (Oakes) Houghton, both representatives of sterling families founded in New England in the Colonial era of our national history. The original progenitors of the Houghton family in America settled in Bolton, Massachusetts. Prom 1848 to 1851 the subject of this memoir attended the boarding school conducted by Edward Hall, at Ellington, Connecticut. Later he continued his studies in the high school at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in which he was graduated as a member of the class of 1854. In 1855 he began his business career, concerning the salient points in which no better record can, ]jerhaps, be given than the following statements from the Corning Daily Journal of Saturday, November 6, 1909, the day following
his death : "After spending three years in the service of Lawson Valentine, in the varnish, paint and oil business in Boston, Massachusetts, he became connected with the Union Glass Company, which his father had founded in 1851 at Somerville, Massachusetts. For thirteen years the father manufactured the finer quality of flint and colored glassware at Somerville, when he removed, in 1864, to Brooklyn, New York, where he purchased the Brooklyn Flint Glass Works. At Brooklyn, Amory Houghton, Jr., was associated with his father
in the glass business and was a stockholder in the incorporated company. In 1868 the Brooklyn Flint Glass Works were induced to remove to Corning, New York, largely through the representation of Blias B. Hungerford, of Corning, that coal and wood to operate the works would here be cheaper than in Brooklyn. The works were established here as the Corning Flint Glass Company, the village of Corning taking, through individuals, fifty thousand dollars of stock, while the company, comprising Amory Houghton, Sr., Josiah Oakes, George P. Bradford and Amory Houghton, Jr., took seventy- five thousand dollars in stock and brought here from Brooklyn about one hundred regular and skilled employes.

"As originally established in Corning the works of the Corning Flint Glass Company covered about two acres and consisted of two furnaces. For at least three years after its establishment the company conducted its operations at a heavy loss, the coal used not being suited to its purpose, and the factory being brought into direct competition with the larger and better equipped Pittsburg factories. In 1871 disaster came and the business was sold to Nathan Cushing, of Boston, who placed in charge of it as manager Amory Houghton, Jr. With an apparently gloomy future for the business, Mr. Hough- ton began the management on slender capital, being often, as he admitted, hard put to pay the help ; but by running economically and by devising and introducing specialties, the business at the end of a year showed a small profit. In 1872 the new manager, then in his thirty-fifth year, bought the establishment on credit, and for three years thereafter he was the sole proprietor, working with characteristic determination to make the business pay. The result of his energy was soon apparent. In 1875 the Coming Glass Works was incorporated with a capital of fifty thousand dollars and with the following officers: Amory Houghton, Jr., president and treas-
urer; his brother, Charles F. Houghton, vice-president; and Henry P. Sinclaire, Sr., secretary. From the time of such in- corporation until his death Amory Houghton, Jr., continued as
head of the concern and one of its largest stockholders. In recent years he had been ably assisted in the conduct of the business by his two sons, Alanson B. and Arthur A. Houghton, and William Sinclaire, younger son of the late Henry P. Sinclaire. "Under the management and presidency of Amory Houghton, Jr., the Corning Glass Works grew and thrived, the plant developing year by year and frequent additions being made, until now it is one of the largest glass-manufacturing establishments to be found anywhere. As now constituted the glass works covers a number of acres and gives employment, in busy times, to more than a thousand persons. It has been the most potent factor in the growth and prosperity of Corning. Amory Houghton, Jr., was ever a student. As a boy in his father's factory in Somerville, Massachusetts, he devoted his attention to experiments in the composition and manufacture of the various kinds of glass, and in this connection he had a laboratory in which to pursue his studies and experimental work. He was determined to know all about glass, and in time there was
no detail of the business in which he was not an adept. In the art of mixing the ingredients which produced the most beautiful ware he became recognized as one without a peer in the United States. He had a firm grasp of principles and he perfected his knowledge of glass jnanufacturing by tireless research and patient investigation. Mr. Houghton was a man of great energy and business sagacity. He was not easily discouraged. He was not impulsive, but calm and deliberative, thinking out a project before taking it up, carefully weighing it in its various phases and then determining upon the course to be pursued. Once that was settled, he went straight forward to the end, his indomitable will pushing aside all obstacles."

A number of years prior to the death of Mr. Houghton the Hon. Harlo Hakes, of Hornellsville, gave the following estimate of his sterling characteristics as a citizen and business man, and the statements are well worthy of reproduction in this memoir: '"In some respects Amory Houghton, Jr., is the fair reminder of his father, every dominant trait, firin determination of character, having been transmitted from sire to son, and its best results are seen in the present prosperous condition of the Corning Glass Works. We pay no fulsome compliment to our subject when we say that the successful re-establishment of the glass works upon a secure and profitable basis was due to his personal effort, energy and determination. Business men knew him to be straightforward and honest, and although his resources in his early business career in Corning were known to be limited, the business men gave him both, credit and
cash without asking security."

With the passing of years the earnest efforts of Mr. Houghton found generous and worthy fruition in large and substantial success, not only in connection with his glass-manufacturing operations but also through judicious investments in coal and other properties. Few men have shown a higher sense of stewardship, and success meant to him not self-aggrandizement and narrowness of view but rather greater opportunity for doing good as one of the world's army of productive workers. It is gratifying to be able to enter at this juncture further quotation from the memorial appearing in the Corning Daily Journal at the time of his death, for the words of appreciation indicate the consensus of popular opinion in the city
where he was best known and where his interests were long centered : "Increased resources were to him only a means for increased usefulness. For years he had been the foremost contributor in Corning to worthy causes. No good cause appealed to him in vain. Every measiire tending to advance the interests of Corning found in him a generous supporter. To enlist his support of a public project was to ensure its success. He was notable for his considerate treatment of employes. He paid good wages and expected good service, but he was never domineering or harsh. He listened patiently to complaints; he even took time to investigate in small matters, so that no injustice might be done. To those employes suffering from dis-
ability on account of age or illness he was especially kind and generous, the only condition imposed being silence as to the amount of the donation or pension and also as to the name of the donor. Mr. Houghton took pleasure in making satisfactory and noble use of the means which he had accumulated by the strength of his brain, the industry of his hands and the steady clearness of his vision. He was a true and stanch friend of those whom he liked or whose good opinion he valued. For many years the most influential citizen of Corning, he never was arrogant, demonstrative or ostentatious in the display of his power or his resources, but to the end of his da)'s he was modest, simple and direct, like all great men. He was a rugged
type of man, with an inflexible standard of integrity. In business as in private life he hewed to an unswerving line of honor and honesty and uprightness."

That "man lives not to himself alone" is an assurance that is amply verified in all the relations of life, but its pertinence is most patent in those instances where persons have so employed their talents, so improved their opportunities and so marshaled their forces as to gain prestige that transcends mere local limitations and finds its angle of influence ever broadening in beneficence and human helpfulness. There is both lesson and incentive in such a life as that of Amory Houghton, Jr., and even the brief outline here offered can but shadow forth the great strength and great nobility of the man. He contributed in magnificent measure to the commercial and civic advancement of Corning and in his death the city and state suffered an irreparable loss. He was long a valued member of the local board of education, and of the same was president from 1892 until the time of his demise. Concerning his services in
this capacity the following statements have been made: "Although engrossed in business affairs he was no figurehead on the board of education but was its mainspring and directing genius, giving much time and thought to the problems of school growth and being a steady advocate of progress in school affairs. His long and valuable services on the board of education attest his public spirit and his deep interest in the cause of education."

Though he accorded an unswerving allegiance to the Republican party and showed a broad-minded interest in public affairs, Mr. Houghton had no ambition for political office, and his only deviation from his fixed rule was made in 1880, when he consented to permit the use of his name as presidential elector on the ticket of his party. During almost the entire period of his residence in Corning Jfr. Houghton was a regular attendant at Christ church. Protestant Episcopal, of whose vestry he was a valued member from 1875 until the time of his death. The present beautiful edifice of Christ church stands in a large degree due to his productive interest and marked generosity.

Mr. Houghton's name is graven deeply and with firm distinction on the history of Corning, where his memory will long be revered and honored for the good he did and the worthy life he lived. He was a commanding figure in connection with the glass-manufacturing industry in the United States, and, as has been well said, he made the name of Coming widely known to the commercial world, and his signal infiuence and ability were felt and recognized in many lines outside of the glass trade. The city of Coming on his death lost a public-spirited and respected resident who, as the head of a great industry, was long the largest individual employer of labor in this city and county. The death of one thus conspicuously identified
with the growth and actively interested in the welfare of the community must be regarded as a public loss of no ordinary magnitude.

On the 19th of June, 1860, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Houghton to Ellen Anne Bigelow, daughter of Alanson Bigelow, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mrs. Houghton survives her honored husband, and concerning their children the following brief data are entered: Elizabeth Bigelow Houghton died at the age of one year. Alanson Bigelow Houghton is president of the Corning Glass Works and Arthur Amory Houghton is vice-president of the same; Annie Bangs Houghton remains with her widowed mother; and Clara Mabel is the wife of Hon. William J. Tully, of New York.22,2,23,24,25,26,27
NotableThe descendants of Amory Houghton Jr would be worth 500 million dollars from the Corning Glass fortune in 1997 (among the 400 wealthiest in the U.S.)
ResearchGreat grandaughter Jane Hadley: I have always known about our connection because my great-grandfather and his father were interested in genealogy. They traveled a great deal and on one of their trips to England the son (Amory Houghton Jr.) met the Baron de Hoghton. We have known the family in a casual way since then
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 432 #1699.
  2. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, in early sections.
  3. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 145 #5654, 175.
  4. [S1092] Hon. Harlo Hakes, Landmarks of Steuben County New York, p. 64.
  5. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 432.
  6. [S235] U.S. Census, 1900 US Census, Corning, Steuben, NY, Vol. 237, ED 75, S 13, L 39.
  7. [S523] Pilgrims Lineages, p. 476.
  8. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 145, 175.
  9. [S1092] Hon. Harlo Hakes, Landmarks of Steuben County New York, p. 62.
  10. [S1092] Hon. Harlo Hakes, Landmarks of Steuben County New York, p. 65.
  11. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , Hadley/ Houghton/ Olmsted Family Tree (Owner: JPrez123): http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/person.aspx
  12. [S812] Unknown author, Biog. Dir. of the Am. Congress, p. 1333.
  13. [S1228] 1870 U.S. Federal Census , Corning, Steuben Co., NY; Roll: M593_1095 Page: 56, line 11, dwl 346-358.
  14. [S235] U.S. Census, 1880 Soundex, Corning, Steuben Co., NY, Reel 72, Vol. 93, ED. 170, Sh. 46, Ln. 10.
  15. [S1229] 1880 U.S. Federal Census , Corning, Steuben Co., NY, Roll: T9_933; Family History Film: 1254933; Page: 147B; Reel 72, Vol. 93, ED. 170, Sh. 46, Ln. 10, dwl 360=379.
  16. [S1304] Davis Dyer and Daniel Gross,, The Generations of Corning: The Life and Times of a Global Corporation, p. 61.
  17. [S1230] 1900 U.S. Federal Census , Corning, Stueben Co., New York; Roll: T623 1163; Enumeration District: 75; Sheet 13A; line 39, dwl 224-236-279.
  18. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 135.
  19. [S95] Newspaper, New York Times Archives: Nov 7, 1909.
  20. [S1304] Davis Dyer and Daniel Gross,, The Generations of Corning: The Life and Times of a Global Corporation, p. 93.
  21. [S1251] A. Scott Berg, Kate Remembered, P. 42.
  22. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 432-433.
  23. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 9.
  24. [S1092] Hon. Harlo Hakes, Landmarks of Steuben County New York, p. 64-65.
  25. [S1139] Prof. W. W. Clayton, Steuben Co. NY Hx, p. 265.
  26. [S1301] Jeffrey J. Matthews, Alanson B. Houghton: Ambassador of the New Era, p. 15.
  27. [S1301] Jeffrey J. Matthews, Alanson B. Houghton: Ambassador of the New Era, p. 31.
  28. [S778] Unknown author Encyclopedia of Biography, XXII, p. 331.

Ellen Ann Bigelow1,2,3

F, #8835, b. 27 September 1840, d. 5 May 1918

Family: Amory Houghton Jr b. 30 Oct 1837, d. 5 Nov 1909

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthSep 27, 1840Boston, Suffolk Co., MA, USA, age 29 in 1870 census; age 37 in 1880 census; Sep 1842, age 57, in 1900 census; age 67 in 1910 census; 1930 census of son Alanson gives NY;
Jane Prezosi gives 27 Sep 19394,5,6
Origin1860Cambridge, Middlesex Co., MA, USA3
MarriageJun 19, 1860Cambridge, Middlesex Co., MA, USA, JWH: Bolton MA7,8,9,3,10
Immigration1868Corning, Steuben Co., NY, USA11
1870 Census1870Corning, Stueben Co., NY, USA, age 33, glass manufactr, personal property $1500-100012
1880 Census1880Corning, Steuben Co., NY, USA, age 41, a glass manufacturer; and 2 servants5,13
1900 Census1900Corning, Steuben, NY, USA, age 62, glass manufactorer; 224 Cedar St; with a nurse and 2 servants4,14
Living190915
1910 Census1910Corning, Steuben Co., NY, USA, age 67, widow, 5 children born, 4 living; and a nurse and a servant16
DeathMay 5, 1918Corning, Steuben Co., NY, USA, at her home10,17
BurialMay 7, 1918Hope Annex Cemetery, Corning, Steuben Co., NY, USA17
ParentsDAlanson Bigelow, b. MA, and Anne Rebecca Bangs; mother born in Canada. They were an "old money" Boston family. Alanson Bigelow was a partner in the jewelry house of Bigelow Brothers & Kennard.

Alanson Bigelow of Boston, Mass., son of Luke & Asenath (Winship) Bigelow,
born in Westminster, Mass.,
May 20, 1809. He early went to Boston and engaged with his brothers in
mercantile life and formed the firm
of Bigelow Brothers, importers and dealers. He married at Cambridge, Nov.
1, 1835, Anne Rebecca Bangs,
dau. of Isaiah and Deborah (Bigelow) Bangs; born in Montreal, November 3,
1816; died at Cambridge, May
24, 1861. He m. (2) November 18, 1863, Mary J. Hudson, widow of Oliver
Hudson, and daughter of Horatio
G. and Kezia E. (Goodnow) Ware. He died in Boston, Feb. 29, 1884.3,6,10
BiographyShe was involved in several social agencies, including the Corning Hospital, the Corning Conservatory of Music, and the Social Service Society, which spearheaded child labor laws. She played the organ.18
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 432 #1699s.
  2. [S112] Who Was Who I, p. 591.
  3. [S1092] Hon. Harlo Hakes, Landmarks of Steuben County New York, p. 65.
  4. [S235] U.S. Census, 1900 US Census, Corning, Steuben, NY, Vol. 237, ED 75, S 13, L 39.
  5. [S235] U.S. Census, 1880 Soundex, Corning, Steuben Co., NY, Reel 72, Vol. 93, ED. 170, Sh. 46, Ln. 10.
  6. [S1359] Gilman Bigelow Howe, Genealogy of the Bigelow Family of America, p. 276.
  7. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 432.
  8. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 145, 175.
  9. [S1092] Hon. Harlo Hakes, Landmarks of Steuben County New York, p. 64.
  10. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , Hadley/ Houghton/ Olmsted Family Tree (Owner: JPrez123): http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/person.aspx
  11. [S812] Unknown author, Biog. Dir. of the Am. Congress, p. 1333.
  12. [S1228] 1870 U.S. Federal Census , Corning, Steuben Co., NY; Roll: M593_1095 Page: 56, line 11, dwl 346-358.
  13. [S1229] 1880 U.S. Federal Census , Corning, Steuben Co., NY, Roll: T9_933; Family History Film: 1254933; Page: 147B; Reel 72, Vol. 93, ED. 170, Sh. 46, Ln. 10, dwl 360=379.
  14. [S1230] 1900 U.S. Federal Census , Corning, Stueben Co., New York; Roll: T623 1163; Enumeration District: 75; Sheet 13A; line 39, dwl 224-236-279.
  15. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 175.
  16. [S1231] 1910 U.S. Federal Census , Corning Ward 4, Steuben, New York; Roll: T624_1079; Page: 3A; Enumeration District: 117;
    line 33, dwl 179-49-56.
  17. [S95] Newspaper, New York Times Archives: May 6, 1918.
  18. [S1301] Jeffrey J. Matthews, Alanson B. Houghton: Ambassador of the New Era, p. 30.
  19. [S778] Unknown author Encyclopedia of Biography, XXII, p. 331.

Katharine Houghton Hepburn1,2,3

F, #8836, b. 12 May 1907, d. 29 June 2003

Family 1: Ludlow Ogden Smith b. c 1899

Family 2: Spencer Bonaventure Tracy b. 4 Apr 1900, d. 10 Jun 1967

  • Partner*: Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was the long term partner of Katharine Houghton Hepburn for 27 year relationship; never married because Tracy refused to divorce his Episcopalian wife, who cared for his deaf son and worked for the deaf between 1941 and 1967.11

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
NotableY
BirthMay 12, 1907Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, christened by grandfather Hepburn; age 12 in 1860 census; age 22 in 1930 census; she used her dead brother's Tom's bd (Nov. 8) as her own4,5
GraduationJun, 1928Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Montgomery Co., PA, USA, 1924-1928; major in history and philosophy6
MarriageDec 12, 1928Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, at her parent's home with Grandfather Sewell Hepburn officiating; Dec 6, 1928 marriage certif.7,8
1930 Census1930Manhattan, New York, New York Co., NY, USA, E. 39th St., rent $110, an insurance broker9
Divorce1934Yucatan, Mexico10,8
Partnerbetween 1941 and 1967for 27 year relationship; never married because Tracy refused to divorce his Episcopalian wife, who cared for his deaf son and worked for the deaf11
Residence1985Fenwick, CT, USA, at her family home since 1913.
Will1992She left 4.17 acres of her estate as protected land for public use.
DeathJun 29, 2003Old Saybrook, Middlesex Co., CT, USA, at home; She had been in failing health in recent years, undergoing hip-replacement surgery and treatment for the kind of tremors associated with Parkinson's disease.12
ObituaryJun 29, 2003Katharine Hepburn Dies at 96
Actress Was in Failing Health in Recent Years

By Bart Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 30, 2003; Page A01

Katharine Hepburn, 96, an actress of breathtaking talent and unsurpassed durability who in a film and stage career that spanned more than five decades became one of the most acclaimed figures in American theater and a popular legend to millions of moviegoers, died Sunday at her home in Old Saybrook, Conn.

She had been in failing health in recent years, undergoing hip-replacement surgery and treatment for the kind of tremors associated with Parkinson's disease.

Miss Hepburn won four Academy Awards for movie acting, more than anyone, and she was nominated for eight others. Her Oscars for Best Actress were spread across a 48-year period from 1933 to 1981.

The first was for "Morning Glory," in which Miss Hepburn played a small-town New England girl who conquers the New York stage. The last was for "On Golden Pond," a poignant drama in which she played 69-year-old Ethel Thayer, caring for her aging and failing husband of 50 years in the twilight of their life together, as they revisit the summer vacation home of their youth.

The other Oscars came for 1968's "The Lion in Winter," in which she was King Henry II's aging and troubled queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and for 1967's "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," where Miss Hepburn and Spencer Tracy played a white liberal couple whose daughter brings home her black fiance.

That was the last of nine films in which Miss Hepburn and Tracy played opposite each other. Off the screen, they had a warm and enduring personal relationship that began with their first film together, "Woman of the Year," in 1942, after Tracy and his wife had separated. But he took the Catholic Church's admonition against divorce seriously. Although Miss Hepburn and Tracy were frequent companions for 25 years, they never married or lived together openly, and they booked separate hotel suites when traveling together. He died just weeks after the filming of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" was finished.

Over the years, Miss Hepburn's theatrical roles ranged from such Shakespearean stage heroines as Portia in "The Merchant of Venice" and Cleopatra in "Antony and Cleopatra" to society girl Tracy Lord in the film and play "The Philadelphia Story."

She proved herself to be one of great tragediennes of the screen in Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical "Long Day's Journey into Night," a 1962 film in which she played the tormented and drug-addicted Mary Tyrone, based on the author's mother. Many critics thought it to have been her finest role.

Unlike most of the motion picture industry's leading actresses of the 1930s and 1940s, Miss Hepburn's artistic stature did not decline as she aged. If anything, it improved, and she continued to play opposite top actors and command the best scripts into her 70s.

Neither beautiful nor sexy by conventional Hollywood standards, Miss Hepburn had what she once described as an "angular face and body, and I suppose an angular personality." She had freckles and copper reddish hair and a voice that Tallulah Bankhead said sounded like "nickels dropping in a slot machine."

But there was a mystique about her and a style and presence on the stage and screen that her fans found electric and captivating. She could infuse the most ordinary of acts with drama and meaning.

Her first film director, George Cukor, spotted this quality in Miss Hepburn's initial screen test simply by the way in which she bent down, picked up a glass of champagne from the floor, then turned and faced the camera. She had a sensitivity to the camera unlike anyone else he'd seen, said Cukor, who would direct Miss Hepburn in films, off and on, for the next 50 years. David O. Selznick, the executive producer of her first movie, "A Bill of Divorcement" in 1932, found her stunning in one of the film's early scenes in which all she did was walk into a room, stretch out her arms and lie down in front of a fireplace.

Tennessee Williams said she was "a playwright's dream-a dream actress," after seeing her performance as the rich and possessive Violet Venable in the 1959 film version of his play "Suddenly Last Summer," which also produced an Oscar nomination for Miss Hepburn.

Frank Capra, the great Hollywood director, once said, "There are actresses and actresses-then there is Hepburn."

In all, she appeared in 42 films, and there was always a lively debate among her followers over which of her roles was the best. "Long Day's Journey into Night" and her four Oscar-winning pictures were among the perennial favorites, as was "The African Queen," a 1951 movie based on a novel by C.S. Forester.

In that film Miss Hepburn played Rose Sayer, a proper and middle-aged British spinster who falls in love with a gin-swilling, ne'er-do-well riverboat pilot, played by Humphrey Bogart, in German East Africa during the early years of World War I.

"The African Queen," also marked a major turning point in Miss Hepburn's career. Until then she had been known primarily for roles in which she played intelligent, independent, well-bred, well-connected and well-off young women. Her later roles tended to be more serious than those early in her career, and she was often cast as a middle-aged or elderly woman attempting to cope with a variety of cares and problems.

She shunned television until late in her career, then in 1975 won an Emmy Award for Best Actress for an ABC-TV special "Love Among the Ruins," an Edwardian comedy about a former Shakespearean actress who is sued for breach of promise by a young man whose marriage proposal she had accepted. She played opposite Laurence Olivier, whose performance won an Emmy for Best Actor.

As a young Hollywood actress, Miss Hepburn was often at odds with the major film studios, which disliked the fact that she would only accept the roles that suited her. She had an independent spirit that led some producers and directors to view her as "an ornery, opinionated snob." She never had a press agent, she often refused to cooperate with film studio publicists, and for years she did not grant media interviews.

If the bulb of a camera flashed from the audience when Miss Hepburn was on the live stage, she would often stop the performance, deliver a sharp tongue-lashing to the miscreant and then begin the scene over again.

In her manner of dress, she was equally unconventional. Her customary attire was a turtleneck sweater, men's trousers and an odd black hat, and it often appeared that much of her clothing was 20 or 30 years old. The Council of Fashion Designers of America gave her an award in 1986 for demonstrating "what American fashion was all about even before any of us thought of designing it." Miss Hepburn's response: "Imagine, the original bag lady getting an award for the way she dresses."

A physical fitness enthusiast, she often played tennis before breakfast, swam outdoors regularly, even in the winter, and whenever possible rode a bicycle instead of riding in a car. She was once the runner-up for the Connecticut women's golf championship

She was often imperious, both on stage and off, but she could also be sensitive and considerate of others. In the summer of 1980, when "On Golden Pond," was being filmed at Big Squam Lake, N.H., she became concerned that the activity might disturb the region's regular summer residents.

One day she walked over to the cottage nearest to where the movie was being filmed. "I'm Katharine Hepburn. We're making a movie next door, and I hope we're not ruining your summer," she told the startled occupants.

Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born in Hartford, Conn., where her father was a physician and her mother a suffragette and an early and militant supporter of birth control. She was educated by tutors at home and at private schools, and in 1928 she graduated from Bryn Mawr College, where she participated in dramatics and decided on acting as a career.

The summer she graduated from college, Miss Hepburn went to Baltimore where she persuaded a producer to give her a job on the live stage, but she was told soon thereafter that she needed more training. She went to New York to study voice and dancing.

That December she married Ludlow Ogden Smith, a wealthy Philadelphia insurance broker, but the marriage lasted only six years, and for much of that period they lived apart as Miss Hepburn pursued her acting career. They did remain friends after divorcing in 1934, and they saw each other periodically for years.

The early years of her acting career were less than auspicious. She played in several summer stock companies, but she was dismissed from the casts of two New York plays. She was also persistent and aggressive about getting new parts. In 1932 she drew her first critical acclaim as Antipe, an Amazon queen in "The Warrior's Husband," a farce based loosely on Aristophanes' "Lysistrata."

That brought her offers from Hollywood, and the same year she signed a contract with RKO Pictures. Her first movie was "Bill of Divorcement," in which she played opposite John Barrymore and attracted more favorable reviews. "Morning Glory," which brought Miss Hepburn her first Oscar, was her third film, and it was followed by "Little Women," for which she was highly praised for her performance as Jo.

Her string of cinematic triumphs was interrupted briefly by a return to the New York stage for the lead role in "The Lake," a melodrama about a society woman whose husband drowns in a lake on their wedding day. The play was panned by critics, who were equally unenthusiastic about Miss Hepburn's performance. That was the play that inspired Dorothy Parker's stinging comment that Miss Hepburn "ran the gamut of emotions from A to B."

Despite her movie successes, by the late 1930s Miss Hepburn had become persona non grata to the RKO executives, many of whom were bitterly resentful that she would accept only those parts that pleased her. In 1937 she bought out her contract with RKO.

She wanted the role of Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With The Wind," in 1939, but the part went to Vivien Leigh. The same year she acquired a one-quarter interest in the stage version of "The Philadelphia Story," and the movie rights as well. Playing a part that she described as "the privileged class enjoying my privileges," Miss Hepburn won the 1940 New York film critics award and her third Academy Award nomination for her performance, after starring in the play on Broadway.

Her first movie role opposite Spencer Tracy came two years later in "Woman of the Year," and it brought a fourth Oscar nomination. In that film, Miss Hepburn was Tess Harding, a smart, sophisticated but cold newspaper columnist who is humanized by Tracy, as the newspaper's down-to-earth sports editor.

At 5-foot-7, with high heels and a hairstyle that made her look even taller, Miss Hepburn appeared at their first meeting to tower over the 5-foot-9 Tracy. "I'm afraid I am a little tall for you, Mr. Tracy," she is said to have observed at their first meeting on the set of "Woman of the Year."

"Don't worry, Miss Hepburn," Tracy is reported to have answered. "I'll cut you down to my size."

There was an electricity and a rapport between them that was soon apparent to others on the movie set, and it would delight millions of moviegoers for the next 25 years.

Off the screen they were together often, if not constantly, and when the demands of separate careers took them apart, they still kept in touch. Miss Hepburn wrote daily letters to Tracy during a 10-week period in the jungles of what then was the Belgian Congo while filming "The African Queen."

Over the years she tried to encourage and support Tracy in his frequent battles with alcoholism, and when his health began to fail in the mid-1960s she reduced her own professional commitments substantially in order to care for him.

"I have had 20 years of perfect companionship with a man among men," she said of Tracy in a 1963 interview with Women's Wear Daily.

After his 1967 death, Miss Hepburn resumed an energetic and ambitious acting career, and it was during this period that she recorded some of her finest performances. At this point she was generally recognized as the first lady of American cinema, and she was one of the few remaining first generation Hollywood stars still able to command top billing.

After playing Eleanor of Aquitaine in "The Lion in Winter," in 1968, she was the madwoman Aurelia in "The Madwoman of Chaillot," in 1969. Later that year she returned to the live stage after a nine-year absence with the lead role in "Coco," a Broadway musical based on the life of French fashion designer Coco Chanel.

Her most recent previous stage performances had been at Stratford, Conn.'s American Shakespeare Festival Theatre, where she had been the female lead in several Shakespeare plays in the late 1950s and in 1960.

In 1973 Miss Hepburn made her television debut in the role of Amanda Wingfield, the faded and frumpy Southern belle dreaming of her past in Tennessee Williams's "The Glass Menagerie," which was broadcast on ABC.

Williams had patterned the character after his mother, and he said that Miss Hepburn "caught almost supernaturally the quality of my mother. She is more authentically my mother than anyone who has ever played the part."

Two years later, Miss Hepburn won the Emmy for "Love Among the Ruins." In October of that year the film "Rooster Cogburn," in which she played opposite John Wayne for the first time, was released. A Western and a great commercial success, the film featured Miss Hepburn as the spinster daughter of a clergyman who is murdered by outlaws. Not surprisingly, Wayne rescues her.

The last of her great performances was as Ethel Thayer in "On Golden Pond." Focusing as it did on the problems of aging and the proximity of death, the film broke new ground for Hollywood. It was especially poignant in that both Miss Hepburn and her co-star, Henry Fonda, were performers of longstanding familiarity to the movie-going public, and they themselves had aged visibly. Fonda, playing a dying man, was in such demonstrably poor health, that it appeared all but certain that this would be his last movie, and in fact it was. While the film brought Miss Hepburn her fourth Oscar, it was Fonda's first for best actor. He died three weeks after the award was announced.

Miss Hepburn continued acting, although afflicted with a palsy that made her head shake.

The year after "On Golden Pond," she did a play that also dealt with problems of growing old, "West Side Waltz," in which she played an aging pianist. The part required her to learn to play a piano well enough to look realistic at it on stage, while the theater sound system played the music on tape.

Two years later she starred in a movie, "The Ultimate Solution of Grace Quigley," a comedy about an elderly woman who hires a professional hit man to eliminate her aging contemporaries who have lost interest in living. The film was a commercial and critical disappointment.

Well into her 70s, she could easily have retired, but she preferred not to. "Work is the only thing that ever made anyone happy," she once said. "The notion that work is a burden is a terrible mistake."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company12

BurialCedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, Section 10
Probate1Jul 25, 2003Old Saybrook, CT, USA, She left her Oscars, scripts to be given to charitable organizations by her executor Erik Hanson (her accountant and friend). She left her home in CT and New York town house to her brother Hepburn, to her sister Margaret Perry, and to the families of her late brother Richard and late sister Marion. She left $10,000 to the tiny church in eastern Maryland where her grandfather, Sewell Hepburn, was a minister.
BiographyAmerican actress; author of The Making of the African Queen and her autobiography, Me; There are multiple biographies, including the genealogically significant "Katharine Hepburn", by Barbara Leaming, 1995.

Born in Hartford, CT at 22 Hudson St. In 1921 she found the body of her older brother Tom in a New York attic. Class of 1928 at Bryn Mawr. Bill of Divorcement (1932) with actor John Barrymore was her first Hollywood film. Her first Broadway play was The Warrior's Husband (1932). Her first Broadway failure was The Lake (1933) (It produced Dorothy Parker's quip: "She runs the gamut of emotions from A. to B."). Other films included Christopher Strong (1933); Morning Glory (1933); Little Women (1933), and Spitfire (1934) were her next films. Other films include: Sylvia Scarlett (1936), Mary of Scotland (1936), Holiday (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Woman of the Year (1942), Keeper of the Flame (1942), State of the Union (1948), Adam's Rib (1949), The African Queen (1951), Pat and Mike (1952), Summertime (1955), The Desk Set (1957), Suddenly Last Summer (1959), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), Trojan Women (1971), Rooster Cogburn (1975), and On Golden Pond (1981). TV films included Love Among the Ruins (1975) with Lawrence Olivier. Close friend of director George Cukor. Separated from husband Luddy in early 1930's. Had relationships with Leland Hayward, Howard Hughes. Did Africa Queen with Humphrey Bogart, directed by John Huston. Summertime, Long Day's Journey into Night, The Lion in Winter (with Peter O'Toole), Rooster Cogburn (with John Wayne), On Golden Pond (with Henry and Jane Fonda). Involved with agent Leland Hayward, director John Ford, pilot and producer Howard Hughes, and, for 27 years, Spencer Tracy. She has won more best actress Oscars (4) than any other actress, and was nominated twelve times (she won for Morning Glory, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter, and On Golden Pond), but she never attended the Academy Awards. She divided her time between her family's home on Long Island Sound, CT and her New York apartment. She found in Tracy someone similar to her father.

Phyllis Wilbourn was her long time assistant.

She loved and had a long relationship with Spencer Tracy from the age of thirty three (with their meeting at MGM in 1941) and for twenty seven years after (his death in 1967). They made nine films together (Woman of the Year, Keeper of the Flame, Without Love, The Sea of Grass, State of the Union, Adam's Rib, Pat and Mike, The Desk Set, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (with Sidney Portier)). Her only hiatus from her acting career, from 1962 to 1967, was to care for Tracy when he was ailing.

Barbara Leaming and A. Scott Berg (her friend and biographer) believed that the defining event in Hepburn's life was the suicide of her brother Tom, who hanged himself when he was 15, one of five suicides in the family. Hepburn, aged 13 at the time she found the body. She soon after abondoned her own May 12 birthday and appropriated Tom's birthday as her own. Tom's death may well explain a woman's need to save a man as furiously self-destructive as the alcoholic Tracy. She was a strong woman who subordinated herself to the needs of significant men. After Tom's death she stopped attending the Oxford School and was tutored at home for 3 years.

She had a platonic collegiate love affair with the alcoholic poet H. Phelps Putnam, widely admired at the time, who wrote about her in "The Daughters of the Sun." She had affairs with Howard Hughes, her agent Leland Hayward, and Charles Boyer. She had an unconsummated love affair with legendary moviemaker John Ford, which began when he directed her in "Mary of Scotland" in 1936. Catholic and married to a woman who refused divorce, Ford vacillated about leaving his wife until it was too late. Hepburn had already committed to Tracy. Unlike Ford, who loved Kate, the insecure Tracy criticized her for everything that "was best about her." She gave up roles, and bolstered his fragile sense of worth. Ford's deathbed conversations with Hepburn were taped by his grandson (and are in Indiana library).

Her maternal grandfather (Alfred Houghton), grand-uncle (Charles F. Houghton), two uncles (Charles Hepburn and Dr. Sewall Hepburn) and her own brother Tom, all committed suicide.

MLM: Kate wore her brother's knickers and fought like a helion with the neighborhood boys. She once shaved her head to look like a boy. She put on a performance of "Beauty and the Beast," charging her neighbors 50 cents admission, a box office high for child drama. She played the Beast, netting $60.00, which she sent to the Najavo Indians of New Mexico, having heard from a missionary that they were in need. The Navajos bought a phonograph. As a child she accompanied her mother on suffrage campaigns. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College and Dramatic Club. Mr. Smith is a frequent visitor to her home. She built for the family the magnificent whitewash brick summer place at Fenwick on Long Island Sound, an unfinished twenty room affair. She backed her neice, Elizabeth Houghton, in her movie debut.

Biographies:
Katharine Hepburn, by Anne Edwards
Katharine Hepburn, by Barbara Leaming
Katharine Hepburn, by Barbara Holland
Katharine Hepburn: A Stylish Life, by Joal Ryan
Katharine Hepburn: An Independent Woman, by Ronald Bergan
Katharine Hepburn: A Remarkable Woman, by Anne Edwards
Katharine Hepburn: A Life in Pictures, by Diana Karanikas Harvey and Jackson Harvey
Katharine Hepburn: Star as Feminist, by Andrew Britton
Kate Remembered, by A. Scott Berg

Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center

In 2004, Bryn Mawr College was named the only organization authorized to commemorate the life and achievements of screen legend Katharine Hepburn ’28 by her family and the executors of her estate. In keeping with Miss Hepburn’s wishes, the Center will also recognize her mother, Katharine Houghton Hepburn, Class of 1899, an early suffragist and family-planning advocate.

The Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center at Bryn Mawr College was established to honor the adventurous and bold spirit of the Houghton Hepburn women and to inspire future generations of women to challenge conventions, just as they did.13,2,14,8,15,16
Notablewas the great American actress, the only one to receive 4 Oscars (and never went to the Academy) Awards).
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 10.
  2. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn.
  3. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 183 #8800.
  4. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 31.
  5. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 128.
  6. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 243.
  7. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 528.
  8. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 183.
  9. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Manhattan, Dist. 275, New York, Reel 1559, p. 1A, ED 275, line 19, dwl 146.
  10. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 126, 239.
  11. [S1251] A. Scott Berg, Kate Remembered, P. 34.
  12. [S95] Newspaper, Washington Post, June 29, 2003.
  13. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life.
  14. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn.
  15. [S1251] A. Scott Berg, Kate Remembered, PP. throughout.
  16. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , http://www.brynmawr.edu/hepburn/ahh.php

Margaret Houghton Hepburn1,2

F, #8837, b. 17 May 1920, d. 20 February 2006

Family: Dr. Thomas Perry PhD b. 11 Sep 1913

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
BirthMay 17, 1920Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, Rootsweb: Apr. 24, 1918 (CJV: sister's)3,4
EducationWent to Miss Baldwin's boarding school and then to Bryn Mawr.5
GraduationBennington College, Bennington, Bennington Co., VT, USA6
MarriageAug 4, 1941Elkton, MD, USA7,4
Divorce8
Notelived a hard physical life, running a cow farm, as a divorcee;
former head of the Canton Public Library8
LivingJul, 2003east of, Hartford, CT, USA, age 839
DeathFeb 20, 2006Canton Center, CT, USA
ObituaryFeb 21, 2006February 21, 2006
PERRY, Margaret ``Peg'' H.

Margaret ``Peg'' (Hepburn) Perry, 85 of Barbourtown Road, Canton Center, died suddenly, Monday, (February 20, 2006) at home. She was born May 17, 1920 in Hartford, daughter of the late Thomas Norval and Katharine (Houghton) Hepburn and has been a resident of Canton Center for the past 60 years. She was a graduate of Bennington College. Mrs. Perry was the librarian at the Canton Public Library for more than 35 years. She is survived by her daughter and three sons, Margaret ``Nome'' Obermeyer of Aspen, CO; Robert G. Perry of Great Barrington, MA, Scott H. and Lansford W. Perry both of Canton Center; and a brother, Robert Hepburn of Canton. She was predeceased by her son, Thomas H. Perry, two sisters, Marion Houghton Hepburn Grant and Katharine Hepburn, a brother, Richard Hepburn and her former husband, Thomas Perry. At Peg's request there will be no services. Vincent Funeral Home, 120 Albany Turnpike, Canton has charge of arrangements. The family specifically requests no flowers. Memorial donations may be made to Friends of the Canton Public Library, P.O. Box 136, Canton, CT 06019-0136.
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 10.
  2. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 184 #8805.
  3. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 189.
  4. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com, Descendants of ?Hepburn/Hepbron, Jan. 29, 2002.
  5. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, 10.
  6. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 171.
  7. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 227.
  8. [S1251] A. Scott Berg, Kate Remembered, P. 54.
  9. [S235] U.S. Census, from Marcia Tracy, Jul 29, 2003.

Marion Houghton Hepburn1,2

F, #8838, b. 24 April 1918, d. 3 August 1986

Family: Ellsworth Strong Grant b. 1917, d. 6 Mar 2013

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
BirthApr 24, 1918Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA3
NewspaperFeb 3, 1939MARION HEPBURN ENGAGED; Sister of Movie Actress to Be Bride of Ellsworth Grant
February 3, 1939, Friday
GraduationJun, 1939Bennington College, Bennington, Bennington Co., VT, USA4
MarriageJun 12, 1939Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA5,6
Living1951Hartford, CT, USA
Author1984The City of Hartford, 1784-1984: An Illustrated History
DeathAug 3, 1986Hartford, CT, USA7
BurialCedar Hill Cmetery, Hartford, CT, USA
BiographyShe went to Miss Baldwin's boarding school and then to Bryn Mawr. She spent one college vacation working at Hull House, a Chicago social center; two years working for John L. Lewis as secretary of the United Federal Works, and again as a picket outside the Hotel Harrington. She graduated from Bennington.
She was involved with Ellsworth from age 15. Her sister Katherine thought she was the most intellectual of her syblings. She was interested in history and active in local historical societies. She was very social. She was a local historian. She was a Connecticut historian and co-founder of the Greater Hartford Urban League. She was the author of seven books on Connecticut history and legend.8,6,9
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 27.
  2. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 184 #8803.
  3. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 183.
  4. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 171.
  5. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 170.
  6. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 184.
  7. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn.
  8. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, 10.
  9. [S1251] A. Scott Berg, Kate Remembered, P. 54.
  10. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 234.
  11. [S935] Who's Who, 1958, p. 1560.
  12. [S415] E-mail from Marcia Tracy, Dec 25, 2003.

Thomas Houghton Hepburn1,2

M, #8839, b. 8 November 1905, d. 3 April 1921

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthNov 8, 1905Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, at home; christiened by his grandfather "Brother Hep"3
DeathApr 3, 1921New York, New York Co., NY, USA, He committed suicide by hanging in an attic at age 15 while visiting "Aunt" Mary Towle; found by his sister Katharine . The family, afterwards, never talked about his suicide. He had made an aborted attempt to hang himself a year before.4
NewspaperApr 4, 1921New York, New York Co., NY, USA, New York Times: MYSTERY IN SUICIDE OF SURGEON'S SON; Hartford Schoolboy, 15, Visiting Here, Is Found Hanging in His Room. WAS ATHLETIC AND HAPPY Must Have Killed Himself as Result of Suddenly Developed Insanity, Father Says.
Thomas Houghton Hepburn, 15 years old, a student at the Kingswood School, and son of Dr. Thomas N. Hepburn, of Hartford, Conn., who had been a guest with his sister for a few days at the home of friends of his parents at 26 Charlton Street, committed suicide yesterday under circumstances which at first raised suspicion in the mind of the boy's father that he had been murdered by strangulation and a clumsy effort made to conceal the crime. Investigation showed that no intruder had entered the house during the night and no disturbance had been heard in the student's room.
After he had learned the details connected with the finding of the body of his son, Dr. Hepburn, who came here last night, said he had decided his son had killed himself as the result of a suddeen development of adolescent insanity.
Young Hepburn had entertained the family with a banjo concert before he retired to bed shortly after ten o'clock on Saturday night. When he did not appear for breakfast his sister, Clara [CJV: Katherine Hepburn] thirteen years old, went to his room. Getting no reply to her summons on the door she entered and saw that his bed had been slept in, but the room appeared to be unoccupied. In a dark angle of a closet and a wall she found her brother's body suspended from a noose made from strips of cloth, which had been placed around a beam of the old fashioned ceiling.
The boy's feet rested on the floor, which raised the question of how he succeeded in strangling himself in that position. While the girl's cries brought aid she lifted the body of her brother and held him clear of the floor until Dr. Condy of St. Vincent's Hospital arrived. He said the boy had been dead several hours.
On Tuesday Thomas and his sister, accompanied by their mother, Mrs. Katherine Houghton Hepburn, had gone to the home of Miss Mary R. Towle at 26 Charlton Street to spend the remaining days of their Easter holiday. Later, Mrs. Hepburn, who was a prominent leader in the campaign in Connecticut for woman suffrage, returned home. Miss Towle, who had been a classmate of Mrs. Hepburn at Bryn Mawr College, and is a law partner of Miss Bertha Rembaugh at 165 Broadway, was told by Thomas before he retired for the night that their visit had been the most pleasant experience of his life.
"My son was normal in mind and body, and the taking of his own life can be accounted for only from a medical point, that he was suddenly afflicted with adolescent insanity." said Dr. Hepburn. "He was an athlete, bronzed with health and exercise. He won his colors with the football team of his school last Fall, and had experessed his ambition to finish his studies at the preparatory school and enter Yale University, to study surgery, and as he said "follow in father's footsteps.""
Thomas had packed the suitcases of himself and sister and had bought tickets for their return home today. It is thought he had risen some time between dawn and 7 o'clock to hang himself.
Special to the New York Times.
"Hartford, Conn., April 3. -- "God alone knows why," was the answer given by a relative when inquiry was made tonight at the home of Dr. Thomas N. Hepburn, 352 Laurel Street, this city, as to the probable cause of the suicide of Thomas Hepburn Jr. in New York City. It was explained that the boy was a normal, happy schoolboy, athletic and ambitious, though somewhat nervous in temperament. He had written cheerful letters to his parents, who were certain there was no girl sweethaeart or thwarted vocation or ambition involved, but that the tragedy must have been born of some sudden, irresistable impulse
The boy's mother was for years the aggressive President of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association until she uoined Alice Paul's militant section with her friend and Vice President of the association, Mrs. M. Toscan Bennett, who recently startled her friends by announcing her determination to dispose of her worldly goods and go to live with her husband, a Hartford lawyer in a log cabin in the Katonah Colony of Communists.5
BurialCedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, ashes buried, after being cremated in New Jersey6
BiographyWhen 6, he developed St. Vitus's dance or chorea (involuntary movements). He had facial tics. After his suicide (Kath found him hanging from a noose made of torn sheeting), his father made a public denial, stating it was "the result of a foolish stunt". The Hepburn family rarely spoke of Tom again.7
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 20.
  2. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 183 #8801.
  3. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 123.
  4. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 189.
  5. [S95] Newspaper, New York Times Archives: Apr 4, 1921.
  6. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 203.
  7. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 33.

Richard Houghton Hepburn1,2

M, #8840, b. 8 September 1911, d. 18 October 2000

Family 1: Estelle Morrison

  • Marriage*: Richard Houghton Hepburn married Estelle Morrison on Oct 25, 1954.6,7
  • Divorce*: Richard Houghton Hepburn and Estelle Morrison were divorced.

Family 2: Elizabeth Ballard

  • Marriage*: Richard Houghton Hepburn married Elizabeth Ballard.6
  • Divorce*: Richard Houghton Hepburn and Elizabeth Ballard were divorced.

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthSep 8, 1911Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, at home3
EducationTrinity College, for one year4
GraduationHarvard University, Cambridge, Middlesex Co., MA, USA4,5
Living1951New York, New York Co., NY, USA
MarriageOct 25, 19546,7
Divorce
Marriage6
Divorce
DeathOct 18, 2000Ivoryton, Middlesex Co., CT, USA8,9
BurialCedar Hill Cmetery, Hartford, CT, USA
BiographyDick was a musician and a playwright, who never made a major name for himself. He lived with and was supported by his sister Katherine after his divorce.5
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 27.
  2. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 183 #8802.
  3. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 145.
  4. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 183.
  5. [S1251] A. Scott Berg, Kate Remembered, P. 54.
  6. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn.
  7. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com, Descendants of ?Hepburn/Hepbron, Jan. 29, 2002.
  8. [S415] E-mail from Marcia Tracy, Jul 29, 2003.
  9. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , Hadley/ Houghton/ Olmsted Family Tree (Owner: Jane Preziosi; JPrez123): http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/person.aspx

Dr. Robert Houghton Hepburn1,2

M, #8841, b. 4 April 1913, d. 26 November 2007

Family: Susanna Floyd b. 4 Oct 1919

  • Marriage*: Dr. Robert Houghton Hepburn married Susanna Floyd on Jan 17, 1943.5,6

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthApr 4, 1913Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA3
Occupationa physician
Graduation1939Harvard University, Cambridge, Middlesex Co., MA, USA4
Research1943
Mil. Serv.between 1943 and 1946Pacific Theater. He was appointed chief of urology aboard the U.S.S. Repose, a naval hospital ship that served at the Battle of Okinawa, and later was stationed at Shanghai serving both the American and British navies.
MarriageJan 17, 19435,6
LivingJul, 2003near, Old Saybrook, CT, USA
DeathNov 26, 2007Hartford Hospital, Hartford, CT, USA7
ObituaryLegend’s Kid Brother Remembered As Caring Doctor, Anti-Vietnam Activist

Last Hepburn Sibling Dies

Robert Hepburn, the last sibling of actress Katharine Hepburn still alive, died of a heart attack Monday at Hartford Hospital, where he headed the urology department more than 30 years ago. He was 94.

The youngest brother of the film legend, Hepburn was one of six children of Katharine Houghton Hepburn, an early proponent for birth control, and Dr. Thomas Hepburn, the head of urology and chief of staff at Hartford Hospital whom Robert would emulate.

A graduate of Harvard Medical School in 1939, Hepburn took an internship at Hartford Hospital and began a residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1941, before being fast-tracked into service in the World War II Pacific theater in 1943. He was appointed chief of urology aboard the U.S.S. Repose, a naval hospital ship that served at the Battle of Okinawa, and later was stationed at Shanghai serving both the American and British navies.

After being discharged in 1946, he began practicing at Hartford Hospital, where he was known as a caring doctor who often did surgeries pro bono, once taking shoes as payment from a cobbler and a birdhouse from a woodworker, said his son-in-law Robert Kravitz.

"When he did his rounds, he spent an inordinate amount of time so that he could understand his patients well at the front end," Kravitz said.

Hepburn's political activism peaked during the Vietnam War, when he served as a lead delegate for anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and wrote several letters to The Courant, including one in 1967 contending that American policy in Vietnam "can never be accepted by Americans who remember their own history."

Hepburn retired from medicine in 1973, staying in a home in West Hartford along the Hart Meadow Brook. A man who once partied with Charlie Chaplin and flew in an airplane with Howard Hughes, Hepburn later moved in with his daughter Susanna and her husband, Kravitz, in Canton.

Kravitz described Hepburn as a humble man who was known for his intelligence and spiritual guidance. Kravitz said that out of all of the Hepburn siblings — which included local historian Marion Hepburn Grant; Margaret Hepburn Perry, former head of the Canton Public Library; playwright Richard Hepburn, and older siblings Thomas and Katharine — Robert was known to his parents as the most focused.

"He [Robert] was probably the glue that held the family together," Kravitz said.

Hepburn is also survived by his son, David P. Hepburn of Glastonbury, and his grandchildren Jarrett, Naomi, Owen and Olivia Kravitz of Canton. There will be no calling hours for Hepburn, and the family will hold a private service.
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Schuyler Ranson Debarthe Grant (Katharine's great niece) has two children-Ondine and Phoebe. She currently resides in NYC and is running http://kulayoga.com/kula/site.html. I'm not sure on the year of the birth of her children, however, I do believe Ondine was born in June of 2006.
BurialCedar Hill Cmetery, Hartford, CT, USA
BiographyLeaming's 'Katharine Hepburn': Harvard educated physician. He was 55 before he knew his grandfather had committed sucide.
circa 1938, completed internship at Boston Hospital; after Harvard and medical school, he assisted his father in the Hartford Hospital.
Physician. The son of the late Katharine Houghton Hepburn and Dr. Thomas N. Hepburn, he was the last survivor among the Hepburn siblings that included actress Katharine Hepburn. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1939, took a two-year internship at Hartford Hospital, then a residency in Urology at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1941 to 1943, sped up because of World War II. During the war he served in various locations until he was appointed Chief of Urology aboard the American Naval Hospital Ship "Repose," which served in the Pacific. He was at the battle of Okinawa when the Japanese surrendered, after which his ship moved to Shanghai, China, where it became a base hospital for Admiral Kincaid's 7th Fleet and the British Far Eastern Fleet. He was discharged in June 1946 at which time he began his practice at Hartford Hospital. He retired as the director of the Urology department in July 1973.5,8
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 27.
  2. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 184 #8804.
  3. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 156.
  4. [S1251] A. Scott Berg, Kate Remembered, P. 54.
  5. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn.
  6. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com, Descendants of ?Hepburn/Hepbron, Jan. 29, 2002.
  7. [S93] Newspaper Obituary, Courant.Com.
  8. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 184.

Marion Jeanette Houghton1,2

F, #8842, b. 22 November 1882, d. 2 October 1968

Family: Stevens Thompson Mason b. 3 Jul 1880, d. 1950

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
BirthNov 22, 1882Buffalo, Erie Co., NY, USA, MLM: 18814,5,3,6
Education1900Arundell School, Baltimore, Baltimore Co., MD, USA7
Graduation1906Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Montgomery Co., PA, USA, A.B.8,3
Occupationwas head worker in the Guild of St. George, Baltimore, and was volunteer worker in the Association of Charities, Detroit. In 1918 she was secretary, in 1919 vice-pres., in 1919-1920 presid. of the Detroit Equal Suffrage League and President of the League of Women Voters, Detroit. She was an agent of the Federal Labor Bureau, and a teacher in the Americanization work of the Detroit Board of Education. She was a member of the Bryn Mawr Alumnae, League of Women Voters, the Woman's City Club of Detroit, Detroit Country Club, Indian Village Club, and Detroit Fine Arts Society.3
MarriageAug 8, 1911Hartford, CT, USA3
Residence1920Detroit, MI, USA9
Living1951San Bernardino, CA, USA
DeathOct 2, 1968Alhambra, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA10
BurialElmwood Cemetery, Detroit, MI, USA
BiographyWoman's who's who of America, 1914: MASON, Marion Houghton (Mrs. Stevens Thomson Mason), 965 Jefferson Av., Detroit, Mich. Born Buffalo. N.Y; daughter of Alfred Houghton
and Caroline (Garlinghouse) Houghton; ed. Bryn Mawr Col!., A.B. '06; Columbia Univ., M.A. '11; School of Philanthropy, '11; m. Hartford, Conn., Aug. 8, 1911, Stevens Thomson Mason.
Head worker in Guild of St. George. Baltimore, Md; volunteer worker in Ass'n of Charities, Detroit, Mich. Interested in the National Flower and Fruit Guild. Christ Church Guild: mem. Advisory Board of District (S.E. and E.) of Ass'n of Charities; mem. Com. on Vocational Opportunities for Women. Clubs: Country, College, Collegiate Alumnte, Bryn Mawr. Episcopalian.
Favors woman suffrage; mem. Just Government League of Md., N.Y. Woman Suffrage Party, Mich. Equal Suffrage Ass'n, Detroit Equal Suffrage League, Coll. Equal Suffrage League (cornmitte service in each of these).
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 498 #2709.
  2. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 175 #8474.
  3. [S811] Unknown author Am. Biog. Libr.: Amer. Women, p. 364.
  4. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 498.
  5. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 10.
  6. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 175.
  7. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 86.
  8. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 95.
  9. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 189.
  10. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn.

Edith Houghton1,2,3

F, #8843, b. 22 December 1879, d. 23 October 1948

Family: Dr. Donald Russell Hooker MD b. 7 Sep 1876, d. 1 Aug 1946

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthDec 22, 1879Canandaigua, Ontario Co., NY, USA, Moser: Buffalo, NY; age 5/12 in 1880 census; Dec. 1879, age 20, in 1900 census5,4,6,7,8
EducationMiss Baldwin's School for Girls, Bryn Mawr, Montgomery Co., PA, USA
1900 CensusJun, 1900Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Montgomery Co., PA, USA, age 20, a student7,9
Graduationbetween 1901 and 1905Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Baltimore Co., MD, USA, studied medicine, but did not finish her degree. She met Tom Hepburn there and became fencing partners.5,10,11,6,12
MarriageJun 14, 1905Baltimore, Baltimore Co., MD, USA, Moser: Buffalo, NY5,13,6,14,15
ResidenceBaltimore, Baltimore Co., MD, USA14
DeathOct 23, 1948Baltimore, Baltimore Co., MD, USA, after being in a coma for almost seven years16,14,17
BurialEvergreen Cemetery, New Haven, CT, USA
BiographyBorn in Buffalo, New York in 1879, Edith Houghton graduated from Bryn Mawr College, and enrolled in the Johns Hopkins University Medical School, one of the first women accepted in that program. There she met Dr. Donald Hooker and, following their marriage and a year of study in Berlin, she returned to Baltimore and began a career in social work. She and Dr. Hooker founded the Guild of St. George, a home for unwed mothers and their babies.

Edith Houghton Hooker became convinced that progressive reform would occur quickly and completely if women achieved the right to vote. Maryland's suffrage movement was experiencing a renaissance, and in 1909, Hooker organized the Just Government League and affiliated her organization with the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). In 1910, the defeat of suffrage in the Maryland General Assembly led Hooker and others to believe that, while they should continue to press the state legislature for suffrage legislation, the answer lay in passage of a national constitutional amendment.

It was clear to organizers like Edith Houghton Hooker and Elizabeth King Ellicott that if reluctant members of state and national lawmaking bodies were to be persuaded to enact women's suffrage, suffragists would have to extend their influence and their argument across the state. They also realized that while there were several local and statewide suffrage organizations, they would have to present a united front in Annapolis. Activists would also have to conduct an effective public information campaign.

The creation in 1912 of the Maryland Suffrage News by Edith Houghton Hooker as the official organ of the Just Government League, addressed each of those needs: unity, a statewide presence, and public information. The News became the weekly voice, not just for the Just Government League, but for the suffrage movement in Maryland, since general circulation newspapers paid little attention to suffrage. The News included such information as the latest count of prosuffrage states, techniques for countering antisuffrage arguments, and helped women feel connected with like-minded women throughout the state. In addition, it informed its subscribers, most of whom were middle class, of the needs and circumstances of working class women, and the problems associated with education, crime and corruption, and negative aspects of industrialization. In 1917, Hooker was asked to serve as editor of The Suffragist, the official publication of the National Women's Party.

Hooker also took to the streets using an automobile, from which she conducted open air meetings in various locations throughout the state. In 1913 alone, the Just Government league held 214 "parlor" meetings, with a total attendance of over 19,000 people, conducted 86 open air meetings, and distributed suffrage literature to more that 114,000 people. By 1915, the Just Government League had 17,000 members.

Although the Maryland Senate passed a suffrage bill in 1916, the House of Delegates continued to defeat the measure.

After the Nineteenth Amendment was passed by Congress in 1919, Hooker, now president of the Maryland Suffrage Party of Baltimore, led an intensive ratification campaign. Even though, she and other suffrage leaders met with new Governor Albert C. Ritchie in February 1920, and presented a petition signed by more than 125,000 people, to the General Assembly, ratification was rejected. Ultimate victory was assured with Tennessee become the thirty-sixth and deciding ratifying state.

The many bound volumes of the Maryland Suffrage News now reside in the Maryland Historical Society, where girls and women of newer generations can understand the drama of the suffrage movement, the dedication of suffragists, and the importance of the result. Without the drive and dynamism of Edith Houghton Hooker, we would have little awareness of the commitment of Maryland suffragists to achieve the right to vote. Edith Houghton Hooker died October 23, 1948.© Copyright Maryland State Archives, 2001

Leaming: p. 148 "tempestuous, passionate, idealistic, argumentative, tomboyish, flamboyant"; suffragette; battled uncle Amory to attend Bryn Mawr. Suspended for a hazing incident (Uncle Amory stated she should be shot, not suspended). Interest in venereal disease education. Joined, with Don and sister Kate, Morrow's Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis (sexual ethics, venereal disease crusade); joined the Equal Suffrage League of Baltimore; was head of the Just Government League and editor of the Maryland Suffrage News; made speeches from her husbands car; lead the Maryland contingent of women (dressed as Amazons) to Alice Paul's Washington DC suffrage march in 1913. She was one of the Silent Sentinels who marched in front of the White House in 1917.
After the suicide of her nephew Tom, she and Don did not return to Fenwick but built their own cottage in Greenville, Maine. She finished her book The Laws of Sex. She worked with Alice Paul for an Equal Rights Amendment.


Edith Houghton Hooker
(1879-1948)

Image of Edith Houghton Hooker from Maryland Women's Hall of Fame program.
Born in Buffalo, New York in 1879, Edith Houghton graduated from Bryn Mawr College, and enrolled in the Johns Hopkins University Medical School, one of the first women accepted in that program. There she met Dr. Donald Hooker and, following their marriage and a year of study in Berlin, she returned to Baltimore and began a career in social work. She and Dr. Hooker founded the Guild of St. George, a home for unwed mothers and their babies.

Edith Houghton Hooker became convinced that progressive reform would occur quickly and completely if women achieved the right to vote. Maryland's suffrage movement was experiencing a renaissance, and in 1909, Hooker organized the Just Government League and affiliated her organization with the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). In 1910, the defeat of suffrage in the Maryland General Assembly led Hooker and others to believe that, while they should continue to press the state legislature for suffrage legislation, the answer lay in passage of a national constitutional amendment.

It was clear to organizers like Edith Houghton Hooker and Elizabeth King Ellicott that if reluctant members of state and national lawmaking bodies were to be persuaded to enact women's suffrage, suffragists would have to extend their influence and their argument across the state. They also realized that while there were several local and statewide suffrage organizations, they would have to present a united front in Annapolis. Activists would also have to conduct an effective public information campaign.

The creation in 1912 of the Maryland Suffrage News by Edith Houghton Hooker as the official organ of the Just Government League, addressed each of those needs: unity, a statewide presence, and public information. The News became the weekly voice, not just for the Just Government League, but for the suffrage movement in Maryland, since general circulation newspapers paid little attention to suffrage. The News included such information as the latest count of prosuffrage states, techniques for countering antisuffrage arguments, and helped women feel connected with like-minded women throughout the state. In addition, it informed its subscribers, most of whom were middle class, of the needs and circumstances of working class women, and the problems associated with education, crime and corruption, and negative aspects of industrialization. In 1917, Hooker was asked to serve as editor of The Suffragist, the official publication of the National Women's Party.

Hooker also took to the streets using an automobile, from which she conducted open air meetings in various locations throughout the state. In 1913 alone, the Just Government league held 214 "parlor" meetings, with a total attendance of over 19,000 people, conducted 86 open air meetings, and distributed suffrage literature to more that 114,000 people. By 1915, the Just Government League had 17,000 members.

Although the Maryland Senate passed a suffrage bill in 1916, the House of Delegates continued to defeat the measure.

After the Nineteenth Amendment was passed by Congress in 1919, Hooker, now president of the Maryland Suffrage Party of Baltimore, led an intensive ratification campaign. Even though, she and other suffrage leaders met with new Governor Albert C. Ritchie in February 1920, and presented a petition signed by more than 125,000 people, to the General Assembly, ratification was rejected. Ultimate victory was assured with Tennessee become the thirty-sixth and deciding ratifying state.

The many bound volumes of the Maryland Suffrage News now reside in the Maryland Historical Society, where girls and women of newer generations can understand the drama of the suffrage movement, the dedication of suffragists, and the importance of the result. Without the drive and dynamism of Edith Houghton Hooker, we would have little awareness of the commitment of Maryland suffragists to achieve the right to vote. Edith Houghton Hooker died October 23, 1948.


© Copyright Maryland State Archives, 2001

Margo Moser:

Edith Houghton was one of the first women to be accepted at the Johns Hopkins Medical School. In her senior year, she married Donald Russell Hooker, a fellow student at Johns Hopkins. She was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College. Mrs. Hooker was an active member of the Suffrage Movement. She and her husband were interested in establishing supervised playgrounds for the underprivileged children of Baltimore, Maryland. She and her husband were also responsible for establishing the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Baltimore. She was the author of some children's stories which were published in the "St. Nicholas Magazine." She also wrote "Life's Clinic."

Her sister was Katharine Houghton who married Dr. Thomas Hepburn of Chestertown, Maryland. One of their daughters, Katharine Hepburn is a well know actress.

My Paternal Grandmother: Edith Houghton Hooker and her ancestors

Edith Houghton (December 22, 1879-October 23, 1948), was born in Buffalo, New York, the second daughter of Alfred Augustus Houghton (1851-1892) and his second wife, Caroline Garlinghouse (1856-1894). Edith Houghton had two sisters: Katharine Martha Houghton (1878-1951), who married Thomas Norvell Hepburn (1879-1962), and Marion Houghton (1884-1968) who married (1) Stevens Mason (d. 1951) and (2) Edwards B Adams. (See Houghton genealogy for their descendents.)

Edith also had a half sister, Mary Francis Houghton (1873-1951), who was the daughter of Alfred Augustus Houghton and his first wife, Olive Chestnutwood Houghton (1852-1873). The Houghton and Chestnutwood families had known each other in Brooklyn, New York before they moved to Buffalo.

Edith's father, Alfred Houghton, was born in East Cambridge, Massachusetts on March 6, 1851. The Houghtons were of old New England stock. They became Capitalists in the glass making business during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. The Houghtons moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1864 where Alfred's father and older brothers established a glass making company. Fred was a troubled child, moody and lethargic, sometimes hardly able to rouse himself from bed. He read books, studied philosophy, and played Schubert and Chopin on the violin. Alfred started undergraduate work at Harvard University (1969-70), leaving after his father's business failed. Later, he graduated from Columbia University. After receiving his law degree from Columbia in 1872, Alfred went to work for a division of the Corning Glass Company in Brooklyn founded by his family and became an attorney for the family firm. Alfred was soon fired by his older brother Amory Houghton, Jr. because of his tardiness. At that time, he lived on State Street in Brooklyn.

In 1872, Alfred married Olive Chestnutwood. In her letters, Olive documented her husband's peculiar obsessions and night time terrors. When Olive became pregnant and was experiencing a bout of the ague (cold, hot and sweating fits) in Brooklyn, she moved to Buffalo to be with her parents. Olive died in 1873 when the infant Mary was three months old. At age 22, Alfred moved to Buffalo to take care of his child. They lived with Alfred's in-laws, Levy and Mary Jones Chestnutwood on East Eagle Street for three years. Mary Houghton was "adopted" by her maternal aunt, Olive's sister, Mary Francis Chestnutwood Linen ("Frankie") who had just lost a child. Mary Francis Houghton was raised first on Niagara Street and then, after the death of Alfred and Caroline, at the Linen's big Victorian home at 308 Summer Street, Buffalo N.Y. She never married. She knew her half sisters, Katharine, Edith, and Marion but was brought up in a more conservative old fashioned family than her younger half sisters.

The early to mid 1870s was a period of great economic growth in Buffalo. John Linen, Frankie's husband, president of the large and successful Buffalo Scale Company hired Alfred Houghton to work with Levi Chestnutwood in managing the Buffalo Scale Company. Alfred Houghton prospered financially, rising to the position of secretary and then vice-president of the company. Alfred eventually became principal owner of the company, a member of Buffalo's industrial elite. During that period, Alfred's brother Amory, Jr. moved the Houghton family glass factory to Corning New York and renamed it the Corning Glass Works.

On May 7, 1877, Alfred Augustus Houghton married twenty year old Caroline Garlinghouse at the home of her widowed mother, Martha Anne Spaulding Garlinghouse (1818-1880). The brick house (built in the 1850s) is located at 216 Prospect Street, Buffalo, N.Y. The minister who performed the marriage was the Reverend L.B. Van Dyke, Rector of the St John's Grace Evangelical Church, Buffalo, New York. ( I have pictures of the house. Marriage records are at the St. John's Grace Evangelical Church.)

Caroline's family had moved to Canandaigua, New York soon after the War of 1812 with Great Britain. At that time, the area was mostly woodland, broken here and there by a new home site. Transportation was limited to a few roads that were largely former Indian trails. Caroline's father, Leman Benton Garlinghouse (1814-1872), born in Canandaigua, was involved in the canal trade. Martha Spalding's family were Quakers who moved to the area from Rochester, New York. Very intelligent and forward thinking, in the vanguard of thinking following Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, they moved into "the burned out district" bringing the "reawakening" to the towns they lived in. After the death of her husband Caroline's mother, Martha Anne Spaulding Garlinghouse moved from Canandaigua to Buffalo where Caroline's brother Frederick was employed by the city of Buffalo as a civil engineer.

Following their marriage, Caroline and Alfred Houghton lived for a time with Martha Spaulding Garlinghouse in Buffalo. Alfred was working for the Buffalo Scale Company. After Martha's death they moved to 329 Prospect Street (house no longer there). They spent the winters in Buffalo, where they were members of the Buffalo industrial elite. Caroline was active in the Women's Investigating Club where women discussed issues of the day with the goal of expanding the intellectual horizons of its members. "Caroline was a woman unlike the majority of her social peers. She recognized the intellectual capabilities of women and sought to challenge herself academically. It would be a valuable lesson that she would impart to her daughters." (Information taken from a paper prepared by James Williams, 1993.)

The Houghtons also owned a seven acre summer home in Athol Springs, Hamburg, New York which overlooked Lake Erie. Alfred bought "the Farm" from Franklin Locke, a friend, a lawyer eight years older than Alfred. Franklin Locke had bought the Beach Estate on Lakeside Drive in Athol Springs and sold it in partitions. The Farm was located about 1-2 miles from Cloverbank where Alfred's sister Nellie Houghton Abbott lived during the summer with her husband George Abbott. Nellie was a favorite aunt of Edith, Katharine, and Marion Houghton. (I visited "the Farm" in 2001 with Katharine's granddaughter, Katharine Houghton Grant, my second cousin, and have pictures of the property overlooking Lake Erie.) Harry, the coachman, took Alfred to the Athol Springs train station every morning and picked him up at night. The family swam in Lake Erie, rode horses on the beach, and picked wild strawberries in the fields. The girls had their own pony cart and the first bicycles at the lake. However, recurrent, chronic depression continued to plague Alfred.

Edith's childhood nickname was "Pid." She was called "Pigweed" by her father because she was growing so fast. Her sisters, Katharine and Marion, shortened the name "Pigweed" to "Pid." Her father taught her to play the violin and chess. Edith was slender and angular–a tomboy with dark sandy bangs and long hair. I have one picture of her as a child where she had cut her hair short, like a boy's hair. The photograph, taken at Lake Erie in 1886, shows Edith with her sisters, a black lab named Nero, Minny (the "new girl"), and Helen Blankenburg ("the cook"). There was also a housekeeper named Lany who took the picture. Much later, when she was a mother herself, Edith told her children that her mother (Carrie) had told her that she was "related to kings and queens and princes and princesses," but no one believed her. (I later discovered that about five generations earlier an ancestor named Rebecca Whitcomb Houghton traced her ancestry back to the Plantagenet King John, to King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and through her to Charlemagne and Pepin, and further back to about 6 A.D. in Eastern Europe or Asia.)

As a child, Edith was educated at home by private tutors. They type of education she and her sisters received was different from most of their peers. They received French lessons from a Professor Sardou as well as a truly academic course of study in all fields. Caroline ordered the latest in history texts for the children's use. "The Houghton children were exposed to the liberal beliefs of their parents that were contrary to the established mores of most of Victorian Buffalo." (Williams, 1993.) They did not attend church, as Alfred and Carrie were more interested in self exploration, following the ideas of the noted free thinker Robert Ingersoll who in the 1800's preached agnosticism and promoted controversial intellectual causes such as evolution.

On Friday, October 28, 1892, following several months of depression, Alfred Houghton committed suicide. He had been so troubled, that Carrie Houghton had sent him from the Farm to Corning to stay with his older brother Amory. On the afternoon of his death, Alfred's sister Nellie had taken him for a ride in her horse and buggy and dropped him off at Amory's massive stone house on Pine Street. Instead of going inside, Alfred walked down a path toward the railroad tracks near a lumber yard at the foot of Cedar Street and shot himself in the head with a gun that he must have been carrying with him all day. Alfred is buried at Prospect Lawn Cemetery, Hamburg, New York (founded 1870) in a plot that he selected, under a stand of large trees. Erie County Surrogate's Court Probate records include Alfred Augustus Houghton's last will and testament dated July 11, 1885, a list of materials in file #10737, an estate inventory, Schedule D: Appraisers Schedule, and a petition for Probate of the will filed November 3, 1892.

After Alfred's death, Edith's mother, Caroline, sold their beloved "Farm" in Hamburg, Alfred's stock in the Buffalo Scale Company, and most of their belongings to ensure a financially secure environment for her children. Carrie turned all of their money over to Amory Houghton, her husband's brother, for investment. Amory invested Caroline's money and greatly increased the value of his brother's estate. (See the Houghton Archives: Receipts of material/money from Caroline Garlinghouse Houghton to Amory Houghton, Jr.-- Dec.3, Dec 4, Dec 22, 1892.) However, Amory made Carrie and the children account for every penny that they spent. Edith was about 12 years old at this time. The family lived at first at their Prospect Street house and later in a rented house on Hodge Street in Buffalo near where Nellie Houghton Abbott lived. (The Hodge Street house is no longer there.)

In early 1894, Caroline was diagnosed with cancerous growths in her abdomen. Although she was treated by Dr. Roswell Park, Buffalo's leading surgeon and cancer specialist, Carrie knew that she had to prepare her children for a future without her. At that time, orphaned children were generally sent to live with relatives which would have meant that the children would be raised in the conservative elite mode rejected by both Caroline and Alfred. Caroline believed in the intellectual capacity of women and had raised her daughters to have faith in their own mental powers, and she did not want them to be raised in a home where the right of women to intellectual and academic growth might be questioned.

During her treatment in Buffalo and convalescence near her childhood home in the Finger Lakes region of New York, Caroline developed a plan to ensure her daughters the liberal, intellectual life that she and Alfred desired for them. Her goals were: (1) to have her girls liberally educated and (2) to have them remain together. She believed that the best place for the girls to get an education was at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania which was known for its advanced ideas about women's education. She picked Bryn Mawr because M. Cary Thomas, President of the College at that time, and Mary Bellinger, heiress of the B&M Railroad who financially supported both Bryn Mawr and Johns Hopkins Medical School, were enthusiastic about women and women's education–an education that was progressive for that time. M. Cary Thomas rejected all aspects of domesticity at the college and created an institution of higher learning similar to prominent men's colleges of the day. (Many of these women were Quakers who first allowed women to speak out in church, and like Caroline's family believed in the value of women's ideas.)

Since Edith and Marion were too young for college, Carrie arranged for them to attend Miss Florence Baldwin's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania prior to their application to Bryn Mawr College. To keep the girls together, Caroline rented a home for them in Bryn Mawr. The specifics of her plan were documented in her will, dated shortly before her final surgery in August, 1894. The last words that she said to her daughters was, "Get an education!" They considered this her dying wish.

On September 2, 1894, Carrie Garlinghouse died at age 38 years of stomach cancer at the Hornellsville Sanitarium about 30-40 miles from Corning, New York. She was prepared for burial at the W.L. Froehley Funeral Home at 84 Lake St., Hamburg, New York (founded 1877). She was laid out prior to the funeral at the home of Sarah and Elijah Dean at
45 Park Street, Buffalo. (Elijah Dean was Caroline's first cousin, both of their mothers were Spauldings. Martha Spaulding Garlinghouse's older sister Isabella Babcock Spaulding Dean was Elijah Dean's mother. Sarah and Elijah's daughter Isabel was a friend of Edith and Katharine Houghton.) Carrie was buried next to her husband at the Prospect Lawn Cemetery in Hamburg. Her death certificate is at the City of Hornell, N.Y. Records of her estate are at the Erie County Surrogate's Court; the will is dated August 15, 1894. She named her brother-in-law Amory Houghton, her brother Frederick Garlinghouse, and her maternal first cousin Mack Smith of Canandaigua as executors to her estate. However, she did not name a guardian for her daughters, wanting the girls to have control over their own lives.

Caroline's plan's for her daughters' education were almost immediately challenged by Amory Houghton, the girls' uncle. Amory felt that he, as patriarch of the Houghton family, was responsible for the care of his nieces. However, Amory, like most men of his time, was against the liberal education of women, and he convinced the other executors of Caroline's estate to ignore the clause in Caroline's will concerning the girls' education.

Thus, in September 1894, Edith, Katharine, and Marion were sent to live with Mack Smith and his wife Nettie in Canadaigua. Edith and Marion were sent to the Granger Place School and the issue of Bryn Mawr was no longer discussed. In response, Edith, Katharine and Marion purposely set out to force the executors of their mother's estate to permit them to attend Bryn Mawr. They developed a plan of petty disobedience. Every evening after dinner, while the Smith's relaxed in their parlor, the girls took turns pounding and stomping on the floor over their heads for exactly one hour prior to two hours of reading to further their educations. This did not bring them closer to Bryn Mawr, but made an unpleasant situation even worse. Edith's older sister, Katharine finally wrote to Amory Houghton. Numerous letters were written among all family members which contributed to the turmoil. (Williams, 1993)

Recognizing that it might be impossible to get the executors to agree to her mother's plans for their education, Katherine began legal procedures in June 1985. Katherine (age 17) and Edith (age 16) demanded a legal hearing to appoint a guardian. Amory agreed to the hearing, offering himself as a possible guardian. Katharine and Edith rejected this idea and set out to find their own guardian. They wrote to Franklin D. Locke, their father's friend whom Amory considered a "reprobate." "Faced with the prospect of losing control over his nieces to a man he thought morally unfit, Amory Houghton finally relented. He allowed Katharine to make plans to take the entrance exams to the college." (Williams, 1993) Katharine was conditionally accepted to Bryn Mawr and took rooms in Penbroke West dormitory at the south end of the campus. Edith and Marion moved nearby to Miss Baldwin's School to prepare for Bryn Mawr. While attending Miss Baldwin's Edith acted the role of a handsome soldier in The Heart of the Princess Astra.

Edith entered Bryn Mawr College with the class of 1901 and lived in 33-35 Pembroke West, a three-room, first-floor corner suite that she shared with her sister Katharine. At college she was distinguished in out-door sports, chess and dramatics. While at Bryn Mawr, Edith appeared in She Stoops to Conquer, The Amazons, and numerous other productions. For a time she considered becoming a professional actress. As a sophomore, Edith was suspended for thirty days for hazing two freshmen on Lantern Night by rousing them from bed, blindfolding them, tying them to a tree, and leaving them in an old cemetery for the night. Following her month's suspension spent at Upland (a small country inn in Chester County 30 miles from Philadelphia), Edith worked hard and excelled in all aspects of college life. She was an exceptional student, especially in the sciences. She completed her degree in three years, graduating with the class of 1900 with a major in chemistry and mathematics

On leaving Bryn Mawr she entered Johns Hopkins as a medical student, where she met her future husband, Dr. Donald Russell Hooker, whom she married in 1905. During the summer after her sophomore year at John's Hopkins Edith went to Paris to study acting. She lived with the La Fratte family in the Latin Quarter in Paris. She decided not to become an actress and returned to Baltimore to resume her medical studies at Johns Hopkins. During her course of studies at Johns Hopkins, she became interested in social problems.

After her marriage and a year's travel with D.R.. Hooker in Europe, she returned to Baltimore where founded a home for young unmarried girls left destitute with infants to care for. The home, which was called the "Guild of St. George," was in operation for about five years, during which Edith had more cases than she could handle. She finally became convinced, as she said, "that enfranchisement of women was the first step in improving moral conditions." From that time forth, Edith devoted her life to Women's Suffrage and social work.

From 1910 until 1920 she was President of the Just Government League of Maryland, a suffrage organization affiliated with the National Women's Party; Secretary of the Hampden Woodberry Neighborhood Association, an organization furthering municipal recreation for adults and children; a member of the Executive Committee of the National Women's Party, and of the Advisory Committee of the Maryland Social Hygiene Society. She published: "Life's Clinic," a group of hospital sketches dealing with venereal diseases which was distributed widely by the U.S. Army and Navy during World War I; "A Criticism of Venereal Prophylaxis" and "The Case Against Prophylaxis" published in Social Hygiene; "The Spirit of Christmas" a story for children in St. Nicholas Magazine, and "Municipal Recreation Centers" in The Survey. She was also the Editor of the Maryland Suffrage News, which played an important role in forging the connection between the home, the homemaker, social issues and a woman's right to vote. Beginning in 1912, the Maryland Suffrage News became the weekly voice for the suffrage movement in Maryland.

On March 9, 1999, Edith was honored by the State of Maryland and the Maryland Commission for Women and inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame, near the State House in Annapolis, Maryland for her significant contributions to women's suffrage. Her daughter, Beatrice Marty made a presentation, as did Dr. Dianne E. Weaver, Ph D, who had nominated Edith Houghton Hooker for this honor. Dr. Weaver also highlighted the work of Edith Houghton Hooker in her Dissertation entitled "Maryland Women and the Transformation of Politics, 1890s-1930."

Her private life was equally productive. She and D.R. Hooker had five children: Donald Houghton Hooker, Russell Houghton Hooker, Edith Houghton Hooker, Jr., Elizabeth Houghton Hooker, and Beatrice Houghton Hooker. (Dates provided above; descriptions to follow.) She was nicknamed "Creakie" by her daughter Beattie. She wanted her daughters to become lawyers and her sons medical doctors. She maintained a close relationship with her sister, Katharine Houghton Hepburn and her family, summering with them in Fenwick, Connecticut for many years. She corresponded regularly with friends and colleagues. She played chess, sometimes even by mail. She met with her children and guests every afternoon for tea. She and D.R. built the Little Island Camp in Greenville, Maine which we continue to enjoy as a family. (More later.)
As an older woman, she had cataracts removed and had to lie in bed with pillows propping her head for three weeks.

I have no memory of my grandmother Edith Houghton Hooker, as she had a major stroke when I was one year old, and she was hospitalized at Keswick Home for the Incurables in Baltimore, Maryland for seven years until her death October 23,1948 when I was eight years old. However, Edith's daughter, my Aunt Edith Houghton Hooker Ilmanen, and my mother, Margaret Creighton Hooker, have told me many stories of her. One of my favorite stories is that she hated to hear me cry when I was an infant. She insisted that I be picked up and comforted. I have a picture of her pushing me in a wheelbarrow down the back path at the Mainland Camp in Greenville, Maine when I was a year old. I have another picture of me paddling in the water at the edge of Wilson Pond under the watchful eye of "Creakie" and my mother.

My mother describes her mother-in-law as one of the most fascinating women that she has ever known. She has talked to me all my life about how stimulating she was to be with. I can only imagine.



More About Edith Houghton:
Education: Graduated from Miss Baldwin's School and Bryn Mawr College..
Education #2: One of the first women to attend John's Hopkins Medical School. Left before graduation to marry Donald Russell Hooker..
Family: Had one miscarriage, two sons, three daughters, and two foster children..
Lived at #1: As a student at Johns Hopkins lived near the railroad station in Baltimore, MD..
Lived at #2: After returning from a two year honeymoon in Europe, she and her husband moved first to Mt Vernon Place (where son Don was born), then to Govens (where Russell Houghton was born), then moved to the Dixon's house at the end of St George's Rd..
Lived at #3: Built a large stone house called "Upland" at 1016 St. George's Road, Roland Park, Baltimore, Maryland.
Occupation: Interested in social problems. Founded the Guild of St George for unwed mothers, which was in operation for 5 years. Devoted her life to Women's Sufferage. President of the Just Government League of Maryland..
Occupation #2: Editor of the Maryland Suffrage News (1912) and the national magazine "Equal Rights." In 1917, she served as editor of "The Suffragist" the official publication of the National Wonmen's Party..
Occupation #3: Member of the Executive Committee of the National Women's Party and of the Advisory Committee of the Maryland Social Hygiene Society..
Occupation #4: One of the founders, with her husband, of the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Baltimore, Maryland..
Occupation #5: Developed recreation facilities for the poor, including the Roosevelt Recreation Center and the Carroll Mansion Recreation Center. Sec. of the Hampden Woods Recreation Assn..
Publications: Also published "A Criticism of Venereal Prophylaxis" and "The Case Against Prophylaxis" in Social Hygiene; "The Spirit of Christmas" in St Nicholas, and "Municipal Recreation Centres" in The Survey..
Publications #2: She published "Life's Clinic" (hospital sketches about venereal diseases) distributed widely by the U.S. Army and Navy during World War I..
Story: Called "Pid" by her sisters which was a shortening for "Pigweed." Her father called her Pigweed because she was growing so fast..


Woman's who's who of America : HOOKER, Edith Houghton (Mrs. Donald Russell Hooker), Cedar Lawn, Station E., Baltimore, Md.
Social worker; b. Canandaigua, N.Y; ed. Granger Place School, Canandaigua; Miss Florence Baldwin's School, Bryn Mawr, Pa; Bryn
Mawr Coll., A.B. 1900; student in Johns Hopkins Med. School, 1900, 1902-05; m. 1905, Dr. Donald Russell Hooker. Engaged in sociological work in
Berlin, Germany, 1905-06; pres. Guild of St George, Baltimore, since 1906. Actively interested in social hygiene work. Favors woman suffrage

Edith Houghton was one of the first women to be accepted at the Johns Hopkins Medical School.In her senior year, she married Donald Russell Hooker, a fellow student at Johns Hopkins.She was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College.Mrs.Hooker was an active member of the Suffrage Movement.She and her husband were interested in establishing supervised playgrounds for the underprivileged children of Baltimore, Maryland.She and her husband were also responsible for establishing the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Baltimore.She was the author of some children's stories which were published in the "St. Nicholas Magazine."She also wrote "Life's Clinic."

Moser: She was interested in becoming an actress until she and D.R. founded the Guild of St. George, a home for unmarried girls, where she worked for 5 years. She devoted her life to Women's Suffrage and social work. From 1910 to 1920 she was President of the Just Government League of Maryland (a suffrage organization), and many other organizations. When she was 63 she had a massive stroke that left her totally incapacitated for 7 years at the Keswick Home for the Incurables.5,18,19,14
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 498 #2708.
  2. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 10.
  3. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 175 #8473.
  4. [S235] U.S. Census, 1880 Soundex, Hamburgh, Erie Co., NY, Reel 72, Vol. 18, ED. 94, Sh. 19, Ln. 45.
  5. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 498.
  6. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 175.
  7. [S235] U.S. Census, 1900 Soundex, Lower Merion Twp, Montgomery Co., PA, Reel 221, Vol. 139, E.D. 295, S. 3, Ln. 69.
  8. [S1519] Dr Margaret Houghton Hooker PhD, Then and Now : A Family History, p. 10.
  9. [S1230] 1900 U.S. Federal Census , Lower Merion, Montgomery Co., Pennsylvania; Roll:T623; Enumeration District: 295; Sheet: 3B; line 69.
  10. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 87.
  11. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 28.
  12. [S1251] A. Scott Berg, Kate Remembered, P. 43.
  13. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 121.
  14. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/m/o/s/…
  15. [S1378] Thomas William Herringshaw, American Elite, p. 339.
  16. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 431.
  17. [S1519] Dr Margaret Houghton Hooker PhD, Then and Now : A Family History, p. 9.
  18. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 149.
  19. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/educ/exhibits/…
  20. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 148.
  21. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 189.

Ellsworth Strong Grant1,2

M, #8844, b. 1917, d. 6 March 2013

Family 1: Marion Houghton Hepburn b. 24 Apr 1918, d. 3 Aug 1986

Family 2: Virginia Tuttle b. c 1918, d. May 2012

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Birth1917Wethersfield, CT, USA
Graduation1939Harvard College, Cambridge, Middlesex Co., MA, USA3
MarriageJun 12, 1939Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA3,4
Officebetween 1969 and 1974West Hartford, CT, USA, Mayor
Author1984The City of Hartford, 1784-1984: An Illustrated History
Marriage5
Noteformer president of the Connecticut Historical Society; a state historian of CT; a mayor of Hartford, CT
Author"The City of Hartford: 1784 to 1984," which was one of three books he wrote with his first wife; "The Colt Armory;" "Yankee Dreamers and Doers; The Story of Connecticut Manufacturing" and "The Miracle of Connecticut."
DeathMar 6, 2013Bloomfield, Hartford Co., CT, USA, age 956
ObituaryMar 31, 2013GRANT, Ellsworth S.
A memorial service for Ellsworth Strong Grant, 95, of Bloomfield who died Wednesday, (March 6, 2013) will be held on Thursday, April 4, 2013 at 3 p.m. in the meeting room at Duncaster, 40 Loeffler Rd., Bloomfield. He is survived by his two children, John Barnard Grant of Sebastopol, California, and Katharine Houghton of New York and Los Angeles; two grandchildren, Jason Grant and Schuyler Grant; a great-grandson and five great-granddaughters, three step-daughters, Carolyn Means, Virginia Giddens and Frances Means and one step-son, Clayton Spencer and eight step-grandchildren and nine step-great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his first wife Marion Houghton Hepburn, who died in 1986, their son Toby, who died in 2010 and his second wife, Virginia Tuttle Grant, who died in 2012. Memorial contributions may be made to the Mortensen Library c/o University of Hartford, 200 Bloomfield Ave., West Hartford, CT 06117, the Connecticut River Museum, 67 Main St., Essex, CT 06426, The Connecticut Historical Society, 1 Elizabeth St., Hartford, CT 06105, The Nature Conservancy, 4245 N Fairfax Dr. #100, Arlington, VA 22203, or the Connecticut Audubon Society, 2325 Burr St., Fairfield, CT 06824. The James T. Pratt Funeral Service, Wethersfield is entrusted with the arrangements.



Published in The Hartford Courant on March 31, 20136
BurialCedar Hill Cmetery, Hartford, CT, USA
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 30.
  2. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 171.
  3. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 170.
  4. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 184.
  5. [S415] E-mail from Marcia Tracy, Aug 7, 2004.
  6. [S93] Newspaper Obituary, http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/hartfordcourant/…
  7. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 234.
  8. [S935] Who's Who, 1958, p. 1560.
  9. [S415] E-mail from Marcia Tracy, Dec 25, 2003.

Thomas Hepburn Perry1,2

M, #8845, b. 19 June 1942, d. 10 May 1968

Family: Sherry Ann Borough

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthJun 19, 19422
MarriageJan 4, 19642
Milit-BegVietnam1
DeathMay 10, 1968Vietnam1,2
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 49.
  2. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com, Descendants of ?Hepburn/Hepbron, Jan. 29, 2002.

Ludlow Ogden Smith1

M, #8846, b. circa 1899

Family: Katharine Houghton Hepburn b. 12 May 1907, d. 29 Jun 2003

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Birthcirca 1899Strafford, PA, USA, age 31 in 1930 census
OccupationPhiladelphia, PA, USA, a broker2
MarriageDec 12, 1928Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, USA, at her parent's home with Grandfather Sewell Hepburn officiating; Dec 6, 1928 marriage certif.3,2
1930 Census1930Manhattan, New York, New York Co., NY, USA, E. 39th St., rent $110, an insurance broker4
Divorce1934Yucatan, Mexico5,2
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 55.
  2. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 183.
  3. [S58] Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 528.
  4. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Manhattan, Dist. 275, New York, Reel 1559, p. 1A, ED 275, line 19, dwl 146.
  5. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 126, 239.

Tor Morrison Hepburn1,2

M, #8847, b. 5 March 1957

Family: Marita Dumlas

  • Marriage*: Tor Morrison Hepburn married Marita Dumlas on Nov 17, 1988.2

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthMar 5, 19572
MarriageNov 17, 19882
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 66.
  2. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com, Descendants of ?Hepburn/Hepbron, Jan. 29, 2002.

Marita Dumlas1

F, #8848

Family: Tor Morrison Hepburn b. 5 Mar 1957

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
MarriageNov 17, 19881
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com, Descendants of ?Hepburn/Hepbron, Jan. 29, 2002.

Hiram Robert Houghton1,2

M, #8849, b. 24 December 1851, d. 8 July 1936

Family 1: Phila (?)

  • Marriage*: Hiram Robert Houghton married Phila (?) MLM: w/1.7

Family 2: Flora Louise Simmons b. 26 Aug 1858, d. 22 Dec 1912

  • Marriage*: Hiram Robert Houghton married Flora Louise Simmons on Aug 26, 1878 w/2; mar 22 years in 1900 census.4,6,8

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
BirthDec 24, 1851Lunenburg, MA, USA, age 8 in 1860 census; age 18 in 1870 census; age 28 in 1880 census; Dec. 1851, age 48 in 1900 census; age 58 in 1910 census; age 68 in 1920 census; age 78 in 1930 census3,4,5,6
MarriageMLM: w/17
MarriageAug 26, 1878w/2; mar 22 years in 1900 census4,6,8
1880 Census1880Lunenburg, Worcester Co., MA, USA, age 28, a farmer8,9
1900 Census1900Lunenburg, Worcester Co., MA, USA, age 48, farmer4,10
1910 Census1910Lunenburg, Worcester Co., MA, USA, age 58, farmer11
1920 Census1920Leominster, Worcester Co., MA, USA, age 68, widower, farmer; and Lydia Lawrence, 50, servant5,12
1930 Census1930Leominster, Worcester Co., MA, USA, age 78, a widower13
DeathJul 8, 193614
ResearchMLM: dd Aug. 20, 18647
BiographyAfter his schooling, he went to Fitchburg, MA. For a year he worked for Wright Woodward & Co., Hardware Co; spent one year with the Buckrill Mowing Co., He resided on the farm until 1873, then bought a blacksmith shop; soon after he bought out the heirs of his father's farm, after going to Kansas in 1874. He returned, leased the farm until his father died in 1876. He owned a milk route for a number of years in Fitchburg. He herded cattle on the Kansas plains. He was a Congregationalist, a Republican, and a delegate for Congressional and Senatorial districts. He served Lunenburg 7 years as assessor and selectman. Successful in market, gardening, and fruit culture. He belonged to the Mass. Fruitgrowers Assoc. He farmed 100 acres of land in the south part of Lunenburg on the Leominster road.7
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 386 #1127.
  2. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 105 #4009, 150.
  3. [S1] Dr. John Wesley Houghton M.D., Houghton Genealogy of 1912, p. 386.
  4. [S235] U.S. Census, 1900 Soundex Massachusetts, Box 127, Vol. 89, E.D. 1648, Sh. 10, Ln. 40.
  5. [S235] U.S. Census, 1920 Soundex, Worcester Co., Mass., Box 129, Vol. 137, E.D. 96, Sh. 3, Ln. 91.
  6. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 105, 150.
  7. [S814] Marshall L. McClanahan, Houghton, John & Beatrix - MLM;, M, p. 150.
  8. [S235] U.S. Census, 1880 Soundex, Lunenburg, Worcester Co., MA, Box 28, Vol. 33, ED 815, Sh 26, Ln 31.
  9. [S1229] 1880 U.S. Federal Census , Lunenburg, Worcester Co., MA, Box 28, Vol. 33, ED 815, Sh 26, Ln 31, dwl 234-248.
  10. [S1230] 1900 U.S. Federal Census , Lunenburg, Worcester Co., Massachusetts; Roll: T623 693; Enumeration District: 1648; Sheet 10A; line 40, dwl 211-219.
  11. [S1231] 1910 U.S. Federal Census , Lunenburg, Worcester, Massachusetts; Roll: T624_629; Page: 16B; Enumeration District: 1777;
    line 79, dwl 274-295.
  12. [S1232] 1920 U.S. Federal Census , Leominster Ward 1, Worcester, Massachusetts; Roll T625_747; Page: 3B; Enumeration District: 96; line 91, dwl 1233-79-80.
  13. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Leominster, Worcester, Massachusetts; Roll: T626_964; Enumeration District: 217; page 92; sheet 13A; line 9, dwl 19-138-296.
  14. [S36] Letter, 1967, from Lona Houghton to niece Harriet N. Houghton Snow.
  15. [S1074] Town Records: Haitland?, VT; VT Division of Records, Middlesex, VT, F-30766, VT Vital Records 1909-1941.

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy1,2

M, #8850, b. 4 April 1900, d. 10 June 1967

Family: Katharine Houghton Hepburn b. 12 May 1907, d. 29 Jun 2003

  • Partner*: Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was the long term partner of Katharine Houghton Hepburn for 27 year relationship; never married because Tracy refused to divorce his Episcopalian wife, who cared for his deaf son and worked for the deaf between 1941 and 1967.3

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
BirthApr 4, 1900Milwaukee, WI, USA2
Partnerbetween 1941 and 1967for 27 year relationship; never married because Tracy refused to divorce his Episcopalian wife, who cared for his deaf son and worked for the deaf3
Educationcirca 1945Ripon College, Ripon, WI, USA, after serving 1 year in WWI, 2 years only2
Occupationthe great American actor
WillLouise Tracy was named beneficiary and executrix and received $500,000 and title to her home.4
DeathJun 10, 1967CA, USA
BurialForest Lawn Cemetery, Glendale, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA5
BiographyMarried to Louise Treadwell Tracy in 1923. Son John was deaf. She founded John Tracy Clinic for deaf children. Spencer was alcoholic (drinking buddies included Pat O'Brien, Frank McHugh, and James Cagney) and multiple affairs, including Loretta Young, Joan Bennett, Myrna Loy, Joan Crawford, and Ingrid Bergman. Katharine and Spencer had a 26 year relationship; never married6
Pedigree

Citations

  1. [S57] Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life, p. 153.
  2. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 190.
  3. [S1251] A. Scott Berg, Kate Remembered, P. 34.
  4. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 348.
  5. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 344.
  6. [S254] Anne Edwards, A Remarkable Woman A Biography of Katharine Hepburn, p. 189.