Kate Trimble Woolsey

Name of Historic Site
Battle Grove Cemetery
Event(s) / Use associated with woman/group/site
Burial place of Kate Trimble de Roode Woolsey (1858-1936)
County
Harrison
Address

531 E Pike Street
Cynthiana, 41031
United States

Associated Organization
Battle Grove Cemetery
Years of Importance
1880-1894
1894-1912
1912-1920
1920-present
Geographic Location
Your Affiliation
Kentucky Woman Suffrage Association
Additional Comments

Kate Trimble Woolsey (1858-1936) was the daughter of Judge William Wallace Trimble of Cynthiana, and his second wife Mary Barlow Trimble (1831-1912) who was born in France but raised in Kentucky. Woolsey was an author and suffragist who often traveled with her friend Susan B. Anthony. Her mother Mary Barlow Trimble was was one of the founders of the Covington Equal Rights Club. Kate's sisters, Frances "Fannie" Trimble Fackler (1854-1930) and Helen Trimble Highton (1860-?), were also suffragists working for the local and state associations. Other siblings included William Pitt Trimble who became a millionaire in Seattle and Lawrence. Kate joined the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1880, and in 1881 she married Eugene H. de Roode (1857-1887) of Lexington who moved to Covington to live with her there. They had a son together, Trimble de Roode (1884-1965). While her husband was ill with malaria and dying, Kate applied to gain custody of her fortune and child by petitioning the court to act as a femme-sole. She summarized the status of Kentucky women under state law in Volume 3 of The History of Woman Suffrage (1885) which was appended to the Kentucky report submitted by Mary Barr Clay. At the age of 37, Kate married divorcee Edward J. Woolsey of Astoria, New York in 1893. When he died in 1895, she went to live in England. There she published her book "Republics versus Woman: Contrasting the Treatment Accorded to Woman in Aristocracies with that Meted Out to Her in Democracies" in 1903. She used much of her book for speeches given at suffrage meetings locally and at the national conventions of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Her mother, a widow at 81 living with Helen in the Trimble mansion, died in 1912; she had appointed Kate to be the executor of her large estate which was shared among the five children. Kate died in 1936 and was buried near her parents, brother Lawrence and her son Trimble de Roode in the Battle Grove Cemetery in Cynthiana.
 

Reference Source of Information
John Farley Trimble, Trimble Families of America (Parsons, WV: McClain Print. Co., 1973), 174-76.