Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Wormeley, Katharine Prescott (14 Jan. 1830-4 Aug. 1908), Civil War relief worker, translator, and biographer, was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, England, the daughter of American parents Ralph Wormeley and Caroline Preble. Wormeley's father was born in Virginia and raised in England, where he became a rear admiral in the Royal Navy. He married Preble in Boston then returned to Virginia to help found the College of William and Mary. From 1836 to 1847 the family lived in London, except for the years 1839-1842, which were spent in France and Switzerland. When her father died in 1852, Wormeley, her mother, and her siblings wintered in either Boston or Washington and lived the remainder of the year among the literary elite in Newport, Rhode Island.

Wormeley gained a sympathy for the poor and invalid from her father, which she channeled into volunteer relief work during the Civil War. Inspired by the formation in 1861 of a Woman's Central Association of Relief in New York and the U.S. Sanitary Commission, Newport women gathered at Wormeley's home to found the Women's Union Aid Society. As head of the society and associate manager of the New England Women's Branch of the Sanitary Commission, Wormeley organized supplies and aid for volunteer soldiers. When the need arose for army clothing, Wormeley hired local unemployed seamstresses by using donations to the society. "During the winter of 1861-1862 about fifty thousand army shirts were thus made, not one of which was returned as imperfect, and [Wormeley] was thus enabled to circulate in about one hundred families, a sum equal to six thousand dollars, which helped them well through the winter" (Brockett, p. 319). Her success earned her a government contract to continue the work from the U.S. Office of Army Clothing and Equipage.

In May 1862 Wormeley was invited by Frederick Law Olmsted, secretary of the Sanitary Commission, to volunteer on the first steamer used to transport wounded soldiers from the battlefields up the James and Pamunkey rivers to northern hospitals and their homes. Her job she discovered was to "attend to the beds, the linen, the clothing of the patients . . . to do all the cooking for the sick, and see that it is properly distributed according to the surgeons' orders; we are also to have a general superintendence over the condition of the wards and over the nurses, who are all men" (Brokett, p. 17).

Wormeley returned to Newport in August and on 1 September 1862 became lady superintendent of the Woman's Department of the Lowell General Hospital at Portsmouth Grove, Rhode Island, which was organized for convalescent soldiers. "Under her charge were the Female Nurses, the Diet Kitchens, and Special diet, the Linen Department, and the Laundry, where she had a steam Washing Machine, which was capable of washing and mangling four thousand pieces a day" (Brockett, p. 322). She requested as a staff member Georgeanna Woolsey, who had also been on the hospital transports, Georgeanna's sister, Jane Woolsey, their cousin Sarah C. Woolsey, and Harriet D. Whetten. Each was in charge of a ward, instructing nurses under them on how to clean linen, take notes of a patient's treatment, medicine, and diet, and, when necessary, arrange special diets assigned by the surgeon. According to Woolsey biographer Anne L. Austin, "In this organization Katharine displayed her usual ability to plan wisely, and her friends worked harmoniously with her. This was the first time that 'ladies' had been permitted to nurse in a U.S. General Hospital in such responsible capacities, and they regarded it as a rare opportunity" (p. 92). Wormeley stayed for little more than a year "carrying on the arrangements of her department with great ability and perfect success" (Brockett p. 322). In September 1863 she returned to Newport, where she was asked to write a history of the Sanitary Commission for the Boston Sanitary Fair. Entitled "The United States Sanitary Commission: A Sketch of Its Purpose and Work," Wormeley's document was considered "graceful in style, direct in detail, plain in statement and logical in argument. . . . It met with great and deserved success, and netted some hundreds of dollars to the fair" (Brockett, p. 323).

Wormeley continued volunteer work after the war and in 1879 founded the Newport Charity Organization Society. As secretary and general agent, she organized domestic classes for poor women of Newport and remained a district visitor and member of the governing board for fifteen years. In 1887 she founded the Girls' Industrial School at Newport, which offered classes in cooking, sewing, and household work. She maintained the school at her own expense for three years, at which time it was incorporated into the public school system. In 1888 the Massachusetts commandery of the Loyal Legion published her collection of letters, The Other Side of War with the Army of the Potomac, which she had written during the peninsular campaign in 1862.

In addition to excelling as a leader of charitable work, Wormeley was one of the best-known and prolific American translators from French. Her translation of Honoré de Balzac's La Comédie Humaine in forty volumes (1885-1896) became the standard edition. Wormeley's "distinguishing characteristic," according to an obituary in The Dial, was "sympathy and appreciation: the ability to enter heartily into the spirit actuating other workers helped to make her the sympathetic and faithful translator she so abundantly proved herself to be." Her other major translations include six volumes of Molière's works (1897), Paul Bourget's Pastels of Men (1891), the works of Alexandre Dumas (1894-1902), The Works of Alphonse Daudet (1898-1900), Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon (1899), Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse (1901), Diary and Correspondence of Count Axel Fersen (1902), and Sainte-Beuve's Portraits of the Eighteenth Century (1905).

Appearing in Putnam's Monthly a month before her death, "Napoleon's Return from St. Helena," Wormeley's final publication, was her impression of the second funeral of Napoleon in Paris, which she had witnessed as a child. Wormeley died of pneumonia at her summer home in Jackson, New Hampshire.

Bibliography

For information on Wormeley's family history see George H. Preble, Genealogical Sketch of the First Three Generations of Prebles in America (1868); Recollections of Ralph Randolph Wormeley (1879), a privately printed account of her father written by Wormeley and her two sisters; and articles focusing on her sister, Mary Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer, in The Dial, 1 Feb. 1904. Sources for her charitable work in Newport are in the Annual Report of 1889-1890 of the Newport School Committee and at the Newport Historical Society. For a brief biographical sketch of Wormeley see F. E. Willard and M. A. Livermore, A Woman of the Century (1893). Wormeley's contribution to the Civil War relief effort is discussed in Anne L. Austin, The Woolsey Sisters of New York 1860-1900 (1971), and Mary C. Vaughan and L. P. Brockett, Famous Women of the War: A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience (1894). Reference to her translations is in the Bookman, Jan. 1908. Obituaries are in the Newport (R.I.) Daily News and the New York Times, 6 Aug. 1908, and The Dial, 16 Aug. 1908.

Barbara L. Ciccarelli

Back to the top

Citation:

Barbara L. Ciccarelli. "Wormeley, Katharine Prescott";

http://www.anb.org/articles/16/16-03342.html;

American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.

Access Date: Tue Aug 06 2013 11:58:49 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time)

Copyright © 2000 American Council of Learned Societies.

Wormeley, Katharine Prescott (1830–1908)

English-born American translator, author and philanthropist. Born on January 14, 1830, in Ipswich, Suffolk, England; died of pneumonia on August 4, 1908, in Jackson, New Hampshire; daughter of Ralph Randolph Wormeley (a rear admiral) and Caroline (Preble) Wormeley.

Selected writings:

The Other Side of War (1889); The United States Sanitary Commission: A Sketch of Its Purpose and Work (1864); A Memoir of Honoré de Balzac (1892).

Selected translations:

Honoré de Balzac's La Comédie Humaine (40 vols., 1885–96); The Works of Balzac (1899); Paul Bourget's Pastels Man (1891, 1892), various works by Alexander Dumas (1894–1902), plays by Molière (1894–97), The Works of Alphonse Daudet (1898–1900), Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon (1899), Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse (1901), Diary and Correspondence of Count Axel Fersen (1902), Sainte-Beuve's Portraits of the Eighteenth Century (1905).

Katharine Prescott Wormeley was born in Ipswich, England, in 1830. Her mother Caroline Wormeley was a daughter of an East India merchant from Boston and was also the niece of Commodore Edward Preble of the U.S. Navy. Her father Ralph Wormeley, a sixth-generation Virginian and a great-nephew of Edmund Randolph, who had served as George Washington's attorney general, spent his childhood in England. He eventually became a British subject and retired from the Royal Navy as a rear admiral. Politically liberal in his views, Ralph bequeathed a sense of social responsibility to his children. Katharine spent most of her childhood in various genteel environments in Europe; she lived in London from 1836 to 1839, followed by three years in Switzerland and France, and lived again in London from 1842 to 1847. Spending the following year again in France, her family returned to the United States in 1848, planning an extended visit. When her father died in 1852, Katharine and her family remained in the United States.

At the onset of the Civil War, Wormeley was one of the first to initiate and participate in relief work in Newport, Rhode Island, where her family was then living. In July 1861, she helped form and direct the local Women's Aid Society. Assisting the families of soldiers who were experiencing rough economic times, Wormeley secured a government contract to make clothing, which furnished work for the wives and daughters of soldiers. Under her direction, the women made more than 50,000 shirts during the winter of 1861–62. After leaving her position in the Women's Aid Society, Wormeley became a member of the hospital transport service of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, caring for the sick and wounded on hospital ships on the York and Pamunkey rivers. Much later, in 1889, she published the letters she had written during this period under the title The Other Side of the War.

Wormeley returned home in August 1862 and, the following month, accepted the position of lady superintendent of Lowell General Hospital, at nearby Portsmouth Grove, Rhode Island. Her duties at the hospital included directing the female nurses and the dietary kitchen, as well as the laundry and linen departments. During this time she was aided by assistant superintendents, including Sarah Chauncey Woolsey and Sarah's cousins Jane Stuart Woolsey and Georgeanna Woolsey . After a year of difficult and stressful work, however, Wormeley became ill, resigned her position, and returned home to Newport to recover.

In the postwar years, Wormeley concentrated on charity work. One of her prominent achievements during this time was the founding of the Newport Charity Organization Society in 1879. She also administered classes in sewing and domestic work for impoverished women. In 1887, Wormeley founded an industrial school for girls where they could learn cooking, dressmaking, household work, and sewing. Wormeley was the school's director and financial supporter until it became a part of Newport's public school system in 1890.

Although she gave much of her time to charitable efforts, Wormeley is best known for her translations of noted French writers, particularly Honoré de Balzac, to which she devoted herself from the early 1880s to the end of her life. She also wrote A Memoir of Honoré de Balzac (1892). According to Dictionary of American Biography, Wormeley had made the translation of his voluminous (40 volumes) La Comédie Humaine such an obsession that "she apparently came to look upon its author as a personal charge" and suffered no criticism of him or his work. An accomplished French scholar with a profound understanding of French culture, Wormeley translated Balzac's work without losing its spirit or sense.

She spent the last years of her life in Jackson, New Hampshire, and died there on August 4, 1908, from pneumonia after breaking her hip from falling on the steps of her house. Her cremated remains were buried near Newport, Rhode Island, beside the grave of her father.

sources:

Jackson, Kenneth T., ed. Dictionary of American Biography. NY: Scribner.

James, Edward T., ed. Notable American Women, 1607–1950. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1971.

Drew Walker , freelance writer, New York, New York

"Wormeley, Katharine Prescott (1830–1908)." Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. . Retrieved January 11, 2018 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/wormeley-katharine-prescott-1830-1908