Rachel Agnes Curry was born July 9, 1875, in Bloomington, Indiana; she died October 14, 1957, in Oskaloosa, Kansas.
Rachel Agnes Curry was my great-grandmother.
Agnes Curry and her family moved from her birthplace in Indiana to Jefferson County, Kansas, when she was five years old. She was one of six children of James Faris Curry (1842-1921) and Matilda Russell (1846-1913) who lived to adulthood.
At the age of thirty-one, she married Thomas Mathews Cathcart (1863-1947)—my great-grandfather. Tom Cathcart’s first wife—Lizzie Wilson (1859-1902)—had died as a result of illness, leaving him the sole parent of a five-year-old and a seven-year-old.
I do not know how he dealt with this loss and the extra burden that came with it, but I have to believe that marrying Agnes improved both his and his young children’s spirits and enabled my great-grandfather to more easily focus on farming.
In 1911, Agnes and Tom added another child to their family: Ina Vera Cathcart (1911-2002)–my grandmother.
The last ten years of her life were spent without Tom, and the last three years of her life were spent at a home near Oskaloosa.
She wasn’t far from her daughter, Ina, though, as well as other family members. Three months before her death, she was fêted for her eighty-first birthday.
Talking Leaves 