128. Catherine Gabrielle DeRosset Kennedy (1800-1889)

There was a student named Catherine DeRosset at the Mordecai school, enrolled for two sessions, in 1811; Dr. A. J. DeRosset was the adult on her account.  As it happens, Catherine DeRosset was from a prominent Wilmington family, and became a friend to Rachel Mordecai after the school years.  Rachel Mordecai even named one of her daughters partly for Catherine (her daughter Mary Catherine Lazarus, born 1828; naming story from a letter, from Mary Orme to Ellen Mordecai, 26 September 1828, Mordecai Family Papers, SHC).  So we know a good deal about her family and how her life turned out. 

(Note:  For a very long time, I remember that she was listed as Catherine Prosser in my draft versions of the school rolls, even while the name DeRosset was familiar in other Mordecai-related contexts.  So there's a reminder that handwriting can be a major cause of error.)

Armand John DeRosset (1767-1859) was a doctor of Huguenot ancestry, like his father and grandfather before him.  Catherine Gabrielle DeRosset was the eldest child of her father's second marriage, to Catherine Fullerton (1773-1737).  Catherine had three younger sisters, and a younger brother Armand Jr., as well as an older half-brother (who was also her cousin--their mothers were sisters), named Moses.  Catherine was ten years old when she went to the Mordecai school (turned 11 there).  She may well have attended school with cousins; her paternal aunt was Mrs. Henry Toomer, her maternal grandmother's maiden name was Toomer, and there was a Sarah Toomer at the school during the same sessions as Catherine was there.

Catherine married a Methodist pastor, Rev. William Magee Kennedy (1783-1840) in 1835, becoming stepmother to his children; they moved to Columbia, South Carolina.  Catherine was forty the year she was widowed, after just five years wed; she and her ten-year-old stepdaughter Cattie moved back to Wilmington at that juncture.  Catherine and Cattie were close; here's one of Cattie's letters to Catherine, from during the Civil War.  (Many years later, Cattie would marry Catherine's younger brother, Armand Jr.)  In Wilmington as a youngish widow, Catherine was a co-founder and first president of the Ladies' Benevolent Society, and founder of a home for elderly women, opened as Old Ladies' Rest.   She also worked briefly as a nurse at a wartime hospital in Petersburg, Virginia, in 1861 (letter, Cate Kennedy to her sister Liz, 1 November 1861, DeRosset Family Papers, SHC).


Catherine DeRosset Kennedy died on Christmas Eve, 1889, age 89.  Old Ladies' Rest was renamed the Catherine Kennedy Home in her memory, and retained that name until it closed in 2000, considered at the time the oldest "home for the aged" in the US.  The Catherine Kennedy Home Foundation remains a granting entity, supporting causes that help senior citizens.

(Image:  State historical marker for the Catherine Kennedy Home in Wilmington.  Reads:  "Catherine Kennedy Home / For the elderly.  Grew from Ladies Benevolent Society. founded 1845.  First home, 1879, stood four blocks east.")

One website calls Catherine DeRosset Kennedy a "driving force"; compared to most of her Mordecai classmates, she certainly took a more public role in pursuing her interests.  She's even the subject of a recent master's thesis, "Catherine Kennedy DeRosset's Independence:  A Modern Historian's Analysis of a Nineteenth-Century Southern Woman" (MA, Georgia State University 2003) by Angela H. Gilleland. 

54. Eliza Bradley

A student named Eliza Bradley attended the Mordecai school for one session, the first part of 1811. She is mentioned as being from Wilmington, with Richard Bradley as the adult on her account. A Richard Bradley also appears in the Mordecai's ledger making a payment in February 1812.

In a letter from Rachel Mordecai Lazarus to Caroline Mordecai Plunkett dated 17 May 1821 at Wilmington (Southern Historical Collection), we read that "Eliza Bradley (Mrs. Hill) has the same lovely eyes we used to admire, and is quite a pleasing woman." In another letter dated 27 August 1827 (same writer, same library, this time to Ellen Mordecai), that "Mrs. Hill (E Bradley) confined but a fortnight lay with the rain dripping on her, changed repeatedly, the house shaking & roof vibrating with the wind, kitchen afloat, children climbing on the bed & crying for something to eat, when to cap the climax the door blew off its hinges & for some hours two persons were obliged to hold it up by main force, neither man nor tool to be had...Mr. Bradley's house surrounded by water & in danger of being carried away, salt works much injured." So Eliza's former teacher knew her in her married life in Wilmington, well enough to know her circumstances in a bad storm.

Turning to the genealogical web to fill in more details: Miss Eliza Rebecca Bradley (1800-1866) was daughter of Richard Bradley, Esq. (1759-1834, a bank officer) and his first wife Rebecca Green (c1770-c1805). She was very young when her mother died, and soon had a stepmother, Eliza Claudia Yonge, and eventually nine half-siblings. Eliza was sent to the Mordecai school when she was 10, but after just one session she returned to the family. She married Dr. John Hill (d. 1847) on 15 May 1817, in Wilmington. As the letter by Rachel Lazarus suggests, she had quite a few children by 1827: this website lists ten children born to her. Eliza was a widow at 47, and died at 66. By blood and/or by marriage, Eliza Bradley Hill would have been kin to much of Wilmington's elite, including the DeRossets, the Greens, the Browns, the Wrights, the Swanns, the Lords, and the Jones families.

Why did she come to school and leave so quickly? I think I found the answer! Her first cousin was Mary Brown. Mary Brown married Alexander Calizance Miller (d 1831*), the Mordecai school's mysterious and dashing music instructor. This was a blow to the Mordecais, professionally and personally (Ellen Mordecai, in particular, tearfully confessed a crush on the Frenchman). The wedding was in July 1811. So Eliza might well have returned to Wilmington for the wedding, and not returned to school afterwards, given the awkward feelings that might exist toward the Bradley-Brown-Green-Wright clan right at the moment.

*For more on this man, see William E. Craig, "The Mysterious Frenchman: Alexander Calizance Miller in America, 1797-1831," Lower Cape Fear Historical Society Bulletin 29 (October 1985): 1-6.