Kate Foote Coe

Katherine Elizabeth Foote Coe (May 31, 1840 – December 23, 1923) was an American educator, journalist, and traveler from Connecticut.

Foote was born in Guilford, Connecticut, one of the ten children of George Augustus Foote and Eliza Spencer Foote. George Foote's sister Roxana was the first wife of Lyman Beecher, so Kate and her siblings were the first cousins of Roxana Foote Beecher's children, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher, Edward Beecher, and Catharine Beecher.^[1] Kate's older sister Harriet Ward Foote married General Joseph Roswell Hawley, governor of Connecticut and United States senator.^[2]

Foote taught at Hartford Female Seminary as a young woman. In 1863, she and her sister Harriet went to South Carolina and Florida with the New England Freedmen's Aid Society,^[3] to teach former slaves during the American Civil War.^[4] In 1872 she spent a year in Europe. When her sister Harriet died in 1886, Foote took over her position as president of the Women's National Indian Association from 1886 to 1895, traveling in the American west and advocating for the establishment of Indian schools and hospitals.^[5] In 1886 she went to Alaska with Alice Cunningham Fletcher and Sheldon Jackson to study the educational needs of Alaska natives.^[6] She then traveled to Japan with Emmeline Beach, daughter of Moses Yale Beach, to learn about women's lives there.^[7]

Foote also wrote for magazines and newspapers. She was the Washington correspondent for the Independent for fifteen years (succeeding Mary C. Ames),^[8] and a contributor to Century magazine and St. Nicholas magazine.^[9] She reported on Persian cats^[10] and on varying opinions of the Washington Monument, among other topics.^[11] She also co-wrote a biography of her sister Harriet with their friend Maria Huntington.^[12]

Como miembro de clubes, Foote fue miembro fundadora del capítulo de Washington D.C. de las Hijas de la Revolución Americana y directora del capítulo de Meriden de la misma organización. ^{[ 7 ]}

Algunas mantas tejidas Chilkat que Kate Foote Coe adquirió en Alaska o procedentes de ella fueron donadas al Museo Peabody de Historia Natural de la Universidad de Yale . ^{[ 13 ]} En 2011, el museo planeó repatriar una de las mantas, que se determinó que había sido retirada de un "contexto funerario". ^{[ 14 ]} Coe también donó cestas que adquirió en Japón e India al Peabody. ^{[ 15 ]}

Foote se casó con Andrew J. Coe, un juez, en 1895. ^{[ 16 ]} Pasaron los primeros meses de su matrimonio en Venezuela, donde Andrew intentaba recuperar su salud. Quedó viuda cuando el juez Coe falleció dos años después, en 1897. ^{[ 7 ]} Tras enviudar, vivió con su hermana menor, Elizabeth Foote Jenkins, en New Haven, Connecticut . Kate Foote Coe falleció en 1923, a los 83 años. ^{[ 17 ]}

Su sobrina Margaret Foote Hawley era una artista especializada en miniaturas de retratos. ^{[ 18 ]}

• Kate Foote Coe en Find a Grave