Catherine "Kate" A. Ryan (1879 - 1913), schoolteacher, mother of two young sons, Frances Hoart's great aunt

Catherine A. Ryan (1879 - 1913)

Kansas school teacher, mother of two young sons 

This is Frances Hoart Poth's great aunt on her mother's mother's side.  

Catherine was born into a large farming family in Lawrence, Kansas, the youngest daughter of  Catherine Bowes and Lawrence Ryan.  We don't know anything else about her early years.  When she was 18 and 19 years old, two of her brothers died. 

Teaching School: 

In 1920, we find Catherine ("Kate") teaching school in Aubry Township, near Olathe Kansas.  We can find several newspaper clippings from that year, such as: 

This same year, her older sister Emma Ryan (Frances' maternal grandmother) passed away. 

Marriage 

We can presume that Catherine taught school for the next five years, until her marriage to John Emry Heaton on May 6, 1905, in Leavenworth Kansas.  

Their first son, John Harlan Heaton, was born in 1906.  Catherine's mother Catherine Bowes Ryan passed away a few years later in Olathe. 

Sometime between 1906 and 1910, the young Heaton family relocated to Eugene, Oregon, where John was employed as a manager for a telephone company.  They owned a home on West 11th Street. 

Their second son, Joseph Emry Heaton ("Junior") was born in 1911 in Eugene.   A year later, Catherine's father Lawrence Ryan passed away.  

Died in Colorado 

Sometime in 1912, the family moved to Loveland, Colorado.   Sadly, Catherine suffered a year-long illness and passed away in 1913 at the age of 34.  

Catherine's older sister Blanche had helped her through the summer before her death, and her siblings had visited for a family reunion July 4th.  

Catherine's sons were just 7 and 2 years old.  (Their father remarried in Billings Montana, in 1915, to Nellie Armstrong). 

Catherine's obituary in the Olathe Independent is so touching: 

Sources:

1880, 1900, 1910 census 

Find a Grave Index 

Kansas Marriages 

The Olathe Independent and Olathe Mirror in newspapers dot com

Cynthia Poth Nanto family tree in Ancestry dot com