Katherine Rolston Ward Fisher, 8th Cousin twice removed

 

Biographical Database of Militant Woman Suffragists, 1913-1920

Biography of Katharine Rolston Fisher, 1871-1950

By Kathleen Smith
Teaching Professor, Georgetown University with research assistance from Pamela Nakahata Smith

Assistant Editor of The Suffragist; Recording Secretary, Washington, D.C. branch of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage

Born on October 20, 1871 in Massachusetts, Katharine Rolston Fisher, (aka Katharine Ward Fisher) was the daughter of Francis D. Fisher and Sarah E. Fisher (née Dix). She was the great-granddaughter of Revolutionary War Major General Artemas Ward, whose house in Shrewsbury exists as a museum to this day. Apparently never married and without children, Rolston Fisher passed away in her home state on January 1, 1950.

Katharine Rolston Fisher worked variously as a bibliographer, writer, and clerk. Between 1898 and 1900, she contributed articles to the Boston publication The Congregationalist. 1901 saw the publication of Elements of the Theory and Practice of Cookery: A Textbook of Household Science for Use in School, coauthored with Mary E. Williams.

On July 9, 1902, the New York World reported on a suicide attempt by Katharine Rolston Fisher, whom the newspaper identified as the librarian of the Manhattan-based Charity Organization Society. Friends and family interviewed by the paper expressed puzzlement about her leap from a Brooklyn bound ferry, noting that the twenty-five-year-old was in good health and had not suffered any romantic disappointments. She was living in California in 1909, but by 1911 she had returned to Brooklyn, N.Y.

Rolston Fisher's involvement with the suffragist movement can be traced at least to 1915 when the Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) reported that "Miss Katharine Rolston Fisher of California, a woman voter" had been brought on by Lucy Burns as an assistant editor for The Suffragist. A year later, according to the Washington Herald, she was elected recording secretary of the Washington DC branch of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. For the April 1, 1916 issue of The Suffragist, Rolston Fisher penned an article supporting the strategy of asking women in those states that had granted women the franchise to use their electoral power to elect proponents of federal action. She also was part of the Congressional Union's delegation to the Republican National Convention in Chicago in June 1916. In spring of 1917, Rolston Fisher participated in calls on congressmen to lobby for suffrage.

The September 22, 1917 issue of The Suffragist features a photo of Rolston Fisher holding an empty pole after the banner she and another picketer had been holding had been torn away by a group of sailors. The picket in question on September 13, 1917 had also resulted in Rolston Fisher's arrest. Along with five other demonstrators, she received a sentence of thirty days in the workhouse at Occoquan.

Rolston Fisher played an important role in publicizing the poor treatment of prisoners in the workhouse; while still in prison, she began to spread word of rotten food, proximity to prisoners with infectious diseases, pressure to perform manual labor while undernourished, withholding of mail, and denial of visits with counsel. As she would write in "From the Log of a Suffrage Picket," "We learned what it is to live under one-man law. The doctor's orders for our milk and toast and even for our medicines were countermanded by the superintendent, so we were told." Based on her time in Occoquan, Rolston Fisher also penned the poem "The Empty Cup" describing the harsh treatment of suffragist leader Lucy Burns.

The US Census of 1920 placed Rolston Fisher in residence at the 'Suffragist House' (NWP headquarters) at 14 Jackson Place, Washington, D.C. and listed her profession as a government clerk. According to Doris Stevens, she worked at the U.S. War Risk Bureau. In or around 1923, she wrote a pamphlet "Lucretia and Elizabeth, London 1840-Seneca Falls 1848," a copy of which can be found in the Library of Congress Special Collections. Rolston Fisher continued to reside in Washington, D.C. for the next twenty odd years while working variously as an author and bibliographer.

Selected Sources:

Adams, Katherine H. and Keene, Michael L., Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008)

"Edith Goode is Suffrage Head," Washington Herald, June 25, 1916, p. 7.

"Her Woe a Secret, Girl Tries to Die," New York World, July 9, 1902.

"Plan of Suffragists to Petition Congress," Evening Star, September 9, 1915, p. 22.

Rolston Fisher, Katharine, "Concerning Appeals," The Suffragist, April 1, 1916, p. 7.

Rolston Fisher, Katharine, "From the Log of a Suffrage Picket," The Suffragist, October 13, 1917, p. 9.

Rolston Fisher, Katharine, "The Empty Cup," The Suffragist, October 17, 1917, p. 8

Stevens, Doris, Jailed for Freedom (rev. ed), ed. Clare O'Hare (Troutdale, OR: NewSage Press, 1995)

"Portrait of Katharine Rolston Fisher, n.d.," National Women's Party Records, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, container I:150.

Source:  https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1009054753

Medal of Honor Recipent, my 6th cousin, 4 times removed, Francis Snow Hesseltine

 Civil War Medal of Honor Recipient. He served as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Union Army in the 13th Maine Infantry. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for action on December 30, 1863. His citation reads "In command of a detachment of 100 men, conducted a reconnaissance for two days, baffling and beating back an attacking force of more than 1000 Confederate cavalry, and regained his transport without loss."

9th Cousin once removed, Lois Helen French

 

Mary Chaffee Heald - 7th Cousin once removed who had an active life.

 Mary Chaffee Heald was born in Canton, IL, 1 Aug 1895. She was married in Winnetka, IL, 6 Jun 1931, to Spencer Rehbock Heindel (b. Freeport, IL, 16 June 1893, son of Albert Jacob and Leonore Fredericka (Rehbock) Heindel). After graduating from Canton High School in 1913, Mary attended Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, from 1913 to 1916. While a student at Oberlin College, she met future author and playwright Thornton Wilder, who was dating a close friend of hers. She also dated future 1940 presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, who was briefly staying with his brother Eddie, a student at Oberlin. Her Oberlin education was interrupted by the sudden death of her mother after which she stayed home to keep house for her father. Returning to college, Mary received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Beloit College, Beloit, WI, in 1922. She later earned a Bachelor of Library Science degree from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, in 1929. After her Beloit graduation, she taught one year of high school English at Stockton, IL, also meeting her future husband in the process. She then taught two years of mechanical drawing and general mathematics at Painesville, OH, high school. Following these three years of teaching, she held library positions at Columbia University, Rutgers University, and the University of Chicago. She then married in 1931 and moved to Dixon, IL, to raise a family. After her sons were both in college, she began working again, this time as head cataloger for the Dixon Public Library, totaling twenty-one years of service, retiring at age 80 in 1976. Mary was a sixty year resident of Dixon, Ill.

Mary's great passion was family genealogy. Through her research at Chicago, Madison, Boston, New York, and Salt Lake City libraries and many trips to New England, she identified over 1000 ancestors. At the conclusion of this research, she privately published the first volume of the Heald-Chaffee Genealogy in 1976 at age 81. The second volume followed two years later in 1978. She also wrote two manuscripts containing her recollections of childhood and family as gifts for her grandchildren, both written in 1984 at age 89.
Organizations to which she belonged include P.E.O.; The National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution (qualifying for membership with ten revolutionary war ancestors); National Society Women Descendants of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company; and Pi Beta Phi social sorority. Mary's hobbies, beside genealogy, included photography; bird watching; reading historical novels, biographies, and travel books; weaving (once recognized as one of 13 state winners of the Illinois "Art is Ageless" competition in 1988); and travel. She made six trips to the British Isles, Scandinavia, Europe (including Italy and Spain), and Africa. Also traveled extensively in the U.S., including experiencing the Colorado River raft trip in 1968 at age 73.
Mary died in Mt. Lebanon, PA, 30 Dec 1995 (age 100).

Daniel Heald - Minuteman

 My 3rd Cousin, seven times removed

Daniel Heald born at Concord, Mass., married Abagail Wheeler December 25, 1760, a daughter of Thomas Wheeler of Lincoln, Mass. Daniel Heald was one of the patriot soldiers of the early colonies, who at the Concord bridge contested with King George's Red Coats the passage of the bridge, while his wife and children who had fled from their home on the approach of the Red Coats, viewed the battle from a neighboring hill. He, with his family, emigrated to Vermont about the year 1776, and settled in a small sparsely settled town, then called New Flemstead, afterwards named Chester, in Windsor County, in the southern part of Vermont. He built a frame house about 1790 that is still occupied in 2008.

9th Cousin once removed

Sylvia Louise Engdahl 

Randall Burt Kiesau, 10th Cousin

 Defensive back Randall Kiesau was one of the 31 victims when one of two chartered planes that were taking the Wichita State University football team to a game in Utah crashed in the Colorado mountains.

10th cousin once removed

 U.S. (Oklahoma) attorney and human rights activist killed in Iraq   Born in Bluejacket, Oklahoma, she shone socially and academically, becoming a homecoming queen and salutatorian at Miami High School earning a B.A, in psychology at the University of Oklahoma and graduating with honors from the University of Tulsa School of law before embarking on a successful career as an Oklahoma Lawyer.  Wanting to make a difference on a global level, Holland joined the Peace Corps in 2000, improved educational systems for children in Namibia and legal system for sexually exploited refugees in Guinea before fighting for women's rights in Iraq,  She labored bravely and tirelessly to set up women's centers in southern Iraq and train them in political and industrial skills, in spite of the danger she was in from those who disliked her work,  On March 9, 2004, she made a routine visit to the women's center in Karbala, which she had helped set up a month before.  While heading east from there back to Al-Hilla, where she was based, she was pursued by five Iraqi policemen in a van who swerved by her car and opened fire with their AK-47 machine guns, killing her and her companions:  Robert Zangas, a former Marine officer who returned as a civilian to work for the coalition, and Salwa Ourmashi, her Iraqi Translator and deputy,  Since Fern's death, Iraqi women have sworn to continue working for their democratic equality in the same spirit that Fern Holland had displayed with diligence and love.   Holland Posthumously received the Defense of Freedom Medal from the Army and the Heroic Oklahoman Award from Oklahoma Governor Brad henry, as well as a resolution from the Cherokee Nation of which she was a member, declaring that she "died as a warrior."  The legal aid Center she established in Guinea was renamed The Fern Holland Legal Aid Clinic of Nzerekore.

Digestive Health

Trying a booster for my digestive health. 

Pennsylvania Audit News

 https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/breaking-court-rules-pennsylvania-senates-investigation-2020-election-results-state-will-move-forward/

Keto breakfast casserole

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