CELIA CATHCART Family Remembrance 1984

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 09: BIOGRAPHY – Staff
Celia Cathcart, PMSS Teacher,
Fundraiser 1915, 1918-1919, Trustee
Celia Scone Cathcart Holton (1893-1942)
Biographical Sketch by Her Sons

1918; Celia Cathcart; embossed on front “Phipps / DANVILLE, ILL”. [1918-00-00-cathcart-celia]

TAGS: Biography of Celia Cathcart Holton by her sons, the Cathcart family, MacMurray College, Northwestern University, Rosedale Farm, Cathcart-Holton Farm Lands, Caryl A. Holton, World War I, Pine Mountain Settlement School volunteers, Katherine Pettit, The Road, fundraising, one-woman shows, hearing loss, cancer treatments, The Depression, Rudorah Sunday School, Yahweh

CELIA CATHCART Family Remembrance 1984

TRANSCRIPTION

Biographical sketch of Celia Cathcart Holton by her son, William Cathcart Holton (Julia Holton Todd’s father), written in 1984 [001-004]. Supplementary notes were provided by her other son, Richard H. Holton [005].

[Note: The text has been slightly edited for clarity]

001

[Notation, upper margin: “1999”]

[Letterhead] W.C. Holton
xxx North xxx St.
London, Ohio 43140

July 14
Dear Milly [likely Mildred Mahoney],

The enclosed photo is a small “Thank You” for your help in getting out the historical material for Julie and for the time you spent with us. We all enjoyed learning more about this interesting period of time.

I have laminated the 1915 Kentucky railroad map which David brought and will mail it soon.

Sincerely
[Signed] Bill Holton

002

CELIA CATHCART HOLTON

[Handwritten notation in top margin: “by William Cathcart Holton, Julia Holton Todd’s father.”]

Celia Cathcart was born May 8, 1893, in Sidell, Illinois. She was the only child of William Gabriel and Anna Sconce Cathcart.

She attended grade school and high school in Sidell. During high school she played basketball. She was valedictorian of her graduating class (which consisted of about 8 persons). After high school, she attended MacMurray College (later Illinois Womans’ College, I believe) in Jacksonville, Illinois.

She spent the following two years at Northwestern University, where she joined Alpha Phi sorority. One of her sorority sisters and closest friends there was Florence Clark. Another was Gwen Farmer, later Gwen Young. Mother graduated in 1915 and earned membership in Phi Beta Kappa.

Celia was married in Sidell on January 8, 1918 to Caryl A. Holton of Sidell, then a second lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers. Shortly thereafter he went to France with the Army Expeditionary Force. He was discharged from the Army in June of 1919.

In 1920, she spent some time as a volunteer worker, teacher, and fund-raiser for Pine Mountain Settlement School in Kentucky. I believe that she had been recruited by a Miss [Katherine] Pettit who had travelled to various schools to tell of the need for such public service. The Pine Mountain experience was like living in another world of poverty, illiteracy, transportation by mule and wagon, but enriched by working with a proud people with a rich heritage of self-sufficiency and strong religious faith.

The lasting contribution which Mother made to Pine Mountain was that of raising funds to build a road over the mountain which would end the isolation of the little school. She went by train to a number of cities where she solicited wealthy individuals for contributions. She carried a 25-caliber pearl-handled automatic pistol for protection. According to Pine Mountain records, she and one other woman raised about $50,000. The road was started in the early 1920’s but was not actually completed for over 10 years. And, by our standards today, it was only a cleared path which could be negotiated by horse-drawn wagons. The path can still be seen.

Father and Mother moved to London, Ohio, in about 1920 … in a house which Grandfather Cathcart (WG) bought for them. WG also gave them a farm (the Rosedale farm). Father’s job was to run the Cathcart-Holton Farm Lands.

003

Sometime in the 1920’s she began giving one-woman shows after the manner of Cornelia Otis Skinner. She perfected this art over a period of time through appearances at clubs and churches, and was popular in the area for some time. Shortly after the birth of David in 1930, Mother contracted a strep throat which resulted eventually in the loss of much of her hearing. She experimented with the early hearing aids, which were crude little boxes. These would amplify all sounds, and could not be adjusted to tune out some frequencies — a squeaking hinge would produce a painful sound. The aids were always inconvenient and could not be unobtrusive. So she studied lip reading at Ohio State University under a Dr. Mason. Mother and I spent many hours with lip reading exercises. She could read my lips from quite a distance, and I could communicate with her from across a room without my making a sound.

Mother had her first bout with cancer in about 1935 when she had a radical mastectomy. “Radical” in those days was much more severe than now, and involved the removal of much more muscle and tissue than is now done. As I recall, an area of about 12 in. by 12 in. was removed. Naturally, the recovery from such a severe operation was quite slow. She also took X-ray treatments to inhibit the further spread of cancer. These treatments interfered with digestion and caused her to be quite weak.

She was able to carry on normal activities much of the time for the next several years. In June, 1941, the whole family took an extended trip East that went as far as Quebec. I particularly treasure the memory of sitting on a rock by a seacoast in Maine one evening with her. She spoke to me as an adult, not an 18-year-old kid. It was a wonderful experience.

In the fall of 1942 she was bedridden most of the time and was rapidly losing weight. Her last meal with the family was Christmas Day. She died December 31, 1942.

All of the above is a short summary of memories and records. These give the essentials, the facts of Mother’s life. But what sort of a person was she?

She was one whose skills were cerebral, not physical. She had not been taught to sew or knit. Her family did not have a washing machine, and we never had one on First Street. Washing and ironing were always done by someone outside the home. She was an adequate cook but did not enjoy working in the kitchen. When washing dishes, she frequently had a book over the sink so she could read or memorize a work.

There were several culinary accidents which I recall clearly. One was the canning of the beef. During the 1930’s Father bought half a beef. This was before the days of freezers, so Mother undertook to can it. This involved cooking and storing in glass. That winter we had plenty of meat but it all tasted the same — the best cuts were like the worst; all were sort of chunky and stringy. And then there was the liver sausage (a by-product of butchering a hog). This resulted in a sort of sandwich meat which was so strong that it could only be used in sandwiches we gave to the tramps and itinerants who came to the back door for a handout.

To Mother, “home” was a neat and tidy place where everything was always “picked up” — no toys on the floor, no mess, no gingerbread, no knick knacks. It was a bit utilitarian and spartan, but adequate. It wasn’t a place to which you invited your friends to play after school.

004

Someone meeting Mother for the first time would be struck with her erect, proud appearance; with her short, man-styled hair (in a day when women wore their hair long). The impression would have been of a patrician (not plebeian) “lady” who was confident of herself. She seemed gracious and a bit cool; she was not the sort of a person who would tolerate an off-color joke or story. The popular “sins of the flesh” — smoking, drinking, playing cards — were intolerable to her.

She set high standards for herself and for her children. “Do your best” was a frequent admonition — and the assumption was that your best would be just a little better than the best of others. She felt a keen obligation to help the unfortunate and needy.

Born to wealth, Mother had to cope with severely limited finances all her married life. Feeding and clothing three growing boys during the Depression years was difficult; little was left over for little luxuries. I was so thrilled when she asked if I would like to go to the Scout Jamboree in 1937; I hadn’t asked to go, as I knew it would cost too much. But she sold one of her diamond rings to make the trip possible.

Throughout her life Mother was a student, a writer, and a teacher. Her studies of the Bible to prepare her to teach the Rudorah Class caused her to become acquainted with all the latest translations. The Bibles she used were covered with her annotations giving cross references and other study guides. She typed many of the talks on Bible topics which she gave; we are privileged to have copies.

Mother’s concept of God was that of Yahweh (Jehovah), not of Abba (Father). I do not believe that she felt the personal relationship with God and Jesus which we seek today.

There wasn’t much time for recreation, but Father and Mother did play golf together occasionally in the 1920’s.

She was well acquainted with sorrow, suffering, and pain. Her Father’s death, a miscarriage in 1929, deafness, and cancer were crosses which she bore valiantly. She was impatient with her own weakness caused by sickness, and tried to overcome it as best she could.

Her short life of 49 years has been an inspiration to me. Her memory is still vivid and the presence of her spirit very real to me even today. I hope that this narrative will convey a bit of the vitality of that spirit.
wch
2/20/84

**********

005

Celia Cathcart Holton (supplementary notes by Richard H. Holton)

Either at MacMurray College or Northwestern, Mother won a beauty queen contest of some sort. I think this might have been mentioned only once or twice by either Father or Mother. It obviously had not gone to her head!

I was particularly impressed with her having gone to school on an “open checkbook,” as she put it; Grandfather Cathcart simply saw to it that there was always enough money in her account to cover any checks she wrote. That was such a contrast to her life in London [Ohio] that I’m sure it was a constant source of regret, even though she commented about it only a couple of times that I can ever remember.

I thought the Pine Mountain years were about 1916-17-18. The Pine Mountain Settlement School historical files are very good and they could verify this for us. In 1964 we visited the School and saw the listing, year by year, of “the workers,” i.e. the volunteers, at the School.

Mother had a wealth of stories from Pine Mountain. For example, Miss Pettit had taken a trip around the world. On her return, she was describing her trip to one of the local patriarchs who was still convinced that the world was flat. She held up and apple for a globe and explained her trip around it. Asked later if she had convinced him that the world was round, he said “No, but I didn’t want to argue with her; it would only disabuse her mind.”

As an academic, I have always appreciated especially Mother’s story about the one-room school near Pine Mountain where the school board had to find a new teacher, the former one having moved on in one dimension or another. In the course of interviewing one of the candidates for the job, one of the board members asked the prospective teacher, “Young man, do you teach round or flat geography?” After a pause, the chap responded that he was happy to say that he was prepared to teach either. I have often thought that that showed admirable flexibility of mind if not principle.

I, too, learned of Grandfather Cathcart’s suicide only when I was in I think my junior high or early high school years. And Mother was still feeling the nature of that loss very deeply. She said through her tears that she thought that one part of the problem might have been her father’s disappointment that she had not had any children yet. But she also said that he was diabetic, and that that was now known to cause people to be depressed at times.

Mother taught the Redorah Sunday School class (wasn’t it referred to as the “married women’s” Sunday School class?) as one would teach a college course on the history of the bible. I recall distinctly that she had little but benign disdain for the Sunday School material which the Methodist Church would automatically send out to Sunday School teachers. She had had more than one good bible or religion course either at MacMurray or Northwestern or both. This obviously inspired her. The class spent at least a couple of years on the travels of St. Paul. The class also spent some time on the study of Judaism. Mother was especially pleased to be able to arrange for a field trip, so to speak, one…

006

…Saturday, when the class went to Columbus to a service at one of the synagogues, followed by a long discussion with a very cooperative and intelligent rabbi.

One benefit from all this which Bill and I enjoyed (although the enjoyment was easy to control at the time) was our own Summer course in the bible in Sidell. The first thing in the morning we would sit down with Mother and learn something more about the travels of St. Paul. We irritated her frequently by not paying attention, so I’m sure that we were a trial for her on many occasions. But I have delighted many times in the memory of that. Perhaps the greatest excitement stemming from that experience was our visiting Corinth in 1961 and seeing where Paul must have stood, in what are now the ruins of Corinth. It certainly made his letters to the Corinthians come alive!

Mother I think found her deafness testing her faith in God. We did help her with her lip-reading, and she began, at least, to be able to do it with reasonable competence. But it required enormous concentration and even then she would of course miss a lot. I was especially impressed, and depressed, with a Sunday morning which proved disastrous. For some reason Mother and I had gone to church together (she usually taught her Sunday School class and skipped the main service) and Dr. Ellsworth had chosen as his scripture reading that famous line about all things are for the best for those that love the Lord. We were scarcely back in the car to drive home when Mother burst into tears, saying that she would have never attended church that morning if she had known that that was going to be the scripture reading. She said between heart-rending sobs that she had never been able to reconcile passage with the fact that she was deaf; how could her deafness have been “for the best?”

Cooking was indeed a chore for Mother, but it surely must have been for anyone in those depression days, with little money and with very limited choice in the grocery stores, in marked contrast with the situation today. She would beg us for ideas about something different to serve for dinner, and I think we seldom could be helpful. She urged me once to please try, after I married, to take my wife out to eat once a month if I could. We did manage to change the scene one evening each summer when we would take a picnic out to the Beach’s woods near Deer Creek. That was something of a ritual, as I look back on it now. for we never missed doing it once each summer, but we never seemed to do it twice, either. It might have disturbed the family sense of orderliness to do it twice some summers but only once others.

Despite her preference for keeping a tidy house, Mother would consent to turning over the whole front room to us for our electric train layout over 10 days or so at Christmastime. That layout grew, thanks much more to Bill’s doings than mine. was quite impressive. Mother clearly enjoyed seeing us enjoy that.

One consequence of Mother’s view of how the house should be kept was that we had no pets, except for a small dog which we had for a few weeks at some point; but the dog never got inside that house once. That whole matter never bothered me as much as Bill, since I am certainly my mother’s son in that I have never found it difficult to control my fondness for pets. Neutral,…

007

…perhaps, but fond, no.

As we moved into our later grade school and high school years, Mother was interested, she once said, in our relationships with each other, and how we responded to whatever small victories each of us might have in school. As an only child, she had missed any such experience herself, she said, and she was intrigued to see what it meant to us.

Born to wealth, Mother found the depression years more difficult, I suspect, than she ever really told us. However she did recall to me once around 1940 or 1941 how very badly she had felt at one point when Father was out of work in 1933, when the depression was at its worst. She said she had taken the three of us boys to a pot-luck supper at the church one evening, and as we were finishing our plates a couple of the ladies came around with little cups of ice cream, five cents each. When asked if she wanted to buy some for us,

I do recall a comment once or twice about how many years she had worn her winter coat, a blue one with a fur collar. Frankly I don’t remember her in any other winter coat but that one when I was growing up. She accepted her life with very few complaints. Somehow even during the depression Mother and Father would get us over to Columbus for a Christmas shopping trip to Lazarus Department Store. Those trips were fun, but our Christmas budgets were limited. The local bank had a Christmas Club account arrangement, into which Bill and I each deposited 15 and 10 cents respectively, weekly, so we could have money to spend for Christmas presents.

Recreation was limited for Mother, but we do have a little trophy awarded her for having won the ladies golf tournament at the London Country Club in 1921. I have impressed some of our friends with that, since they identified it with the other London.

Yes, there was discipline in the family, with Mother having Father administer the spanking or the hairbrush (in later years) when he would come home in the evening. Her psychological intuition was devilishly effective; a sufficiently egregious transgression committed early in the day, with appropriate disciplinary action promised for just before dinner, when Father would be coming home, meant that the anticipation would be nearly as excruciating as the punishment itself. The afternoon would be about as lighthearted as Death Row. But Mother was firm; no matter how syrupy sweet I might be the rest of the day, the sentence remained. Once a noteworthy variation on this sequence occurred. I had done some terrible thing, by Mother’s criteria at least, at an age when bare-bottom spanking rather than the hairbrush treatment was in vogue, and Mother decided that discipline was warranted. I must have been about five years old. What neither Father nor I really appreciated until he began to administer the spanking was that I had a full bladder. Because of the stressful nature of the circumstances I inadvertently let go and urinated fulsomely, leaving Father with a very wet pantleg. Still wailing. I was at least delighted to see that Father’s sense of humor had risen to the occasion and he was greatly amused. The possibility of my being paddled again had crossed my mind, so I was happy about that aspect of the developments. I viewed the scene with mixed emotions.

008

Mother pushed us in various ways. Piano lessons were continued until at least a year after I had wanted to stop. But she was always interested in what we were doing, she was supportive in every way, eager to see us think about what we might do with our lives. More than once she commented that it would be good if at least one of us three boys took a real interest in the farms; I suspect she wanted at least one of us to be more like her father. There was never any question about our all being thoroughly loved; there was discipline, yes, but love certainly dominated. Or perhaps the discipline was just an adjunct of the love.

I’m sure Father decided to sell the Rosedale farm so we could be sure to make things as enjoyable for Mother the last few years of her life as possible. The trip east, all the way to Quebec city, was memorable, in part because the initial plan was to come back home from Boston. We did have some lay-over days to let Mother rest, a marked departure from previous trips which had been planned with precision. And when it developed that Mother was doing rather well on the trip, Father announced to our delight that we would go to Quebec.

Mother faced her last weeks with enormous inner strength. I was still at home, a senior in high school, sixteen years old; Father told me Thanksgiving weekend that there was no hope that Mother would live. I remember refusing to accept that fact that this was happening.

I have always thought that Mother was really cheated in not being able to live long enough to enjoy any of the prosperity of the post-war years. She had endured the depression when even some of the simpler joys of life were limited, but she accepted that life and her love and compassion dominated. And she missed knowing and loving her sons’ families.

Besides the regret that she never knew Connie and our children, nor they her, another but much lesser regret comes to mind. I wish she had been alive in 1963, when I was sworn in as Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs in the cabinet room of the White House, with President Kennedy administering the oath. Father and Toots were there, as well as Connie and our children of course. I wish I could have shared that moment with Mother, too. She would have enjoyed it.

Dr. Ellsworth officiated at Mother’s funeral. He was given to using very short readings from the scriptures as themes for his sermons. I recalled his using on this occasion simply the phrase “She was a lady.” Bill says the reference is 2 John verse 1, where there is the phrase introducing the chapter, “The elder unto the elect lady and her children…” A lady she was indeed.