{{Short description|American educator, journalist, and traveler (1840–1923)}} thumb|Kate Foote Coe, from a 1906 publication. '''Katherine Elizabeth Foote Coe''' (May 31, 1840 – December 23, 1923) was an American educator, journalist, and traveler from Connecticut.
==Early life== 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.<ref>[https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/hbs/nook/stowe_house.shtml "Other Nook Farm Houses and Residents"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150910015058/http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/hbs/nook/stowe_house.shtml |date=2015-09-10 }}, Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.</ref> Kate's older sister Harriet Ward Foote married General Joseph Roswell Hawley, governor of Connecticut and United States senator.<ref>Maggie MacLean, [http://www.civilwarwomenblog.com/harriet-foote-hawley/ "Harriet Foote Hawley: Civil War Nurse and Occasional Journalist"] ''Civil War Women'' (May 19, 2014).</ref>
==Career== 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,<ref>James Oliver Horton, Lois E. Horton, [https://books.google.com/books?id=-1sSDAAAQBAJ&dq=Kate+Foote+South+Carolina+Freedmen&pg=PA181 ''Slavery and the Making of America''] (Oxford University Press 2005): 181. {{ISBN|9780195179033}}</ref> to teach former slaves during the American Civil War.<ref>Barbara Brackman, [https://books.google.com/books?id=h_ntmoycHW4C&dq=Kate+Foote+Coe&pg=PA94 ''Facts & Fabrications – Unraveling the History of Quilts & Slavery: 8 Projects''] (C&T Publishing 2010): 94. {{ISBN|9781607053866}}</ref> 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.<ref>Cathleen D. Cahill, [https://books.google.com/books?id=TVDVBgAAQBAJ&dq=Kate+Foote&pg=PA221 "'Noble Women Not a Few': The Lake Mohonk Conferences"] in Valerie Sherer Mathes, ed., ''The Women's National Indian Association: A History'' (UNM Press 2015): 221-222. {{ISBN|9780826355645}}</ref> In 1886 she went to Alaska with Alice Cunningham Fletcher and Sheldon Jackson to study the educational needs of Alaska natives.<ref>Joan T. Mark, [https://books.google.com/books?id=883iFbaTFkUC&dq=Kate+Foote&pg=PA145 ''A Stranger in Her Native Land: Alice Fletcher and the American Indians''] (University of Nebraska Press 1988): 138-146. {{ISBN|9780803281561}}</ref> She then traveled to Japan with Emmeline Beach, daughter of Moses Yale Beach, to learn about women's lives there.<ref name="Meriden">Charles Bancroft Gillespie, George Munsor Curtis, [https://books.google.com/books?id=-zQWAAAAYAAJ&q=Coe&pg=RA1-PA319 ''An Historic Record and Pictorial Description of the Town of Meriden, Connecticut''] (Journal Publishing Co. 1906): 320-322.</ref>
Foote also wrote for magazines and newspapers. She was the Washington correspondent for the ''Independent'' for fifteen years (succeeding Mary C. Ames),<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=mA8-AQAAMAAJ&dq=Kate+Foote&pg=PA78 "People and Things"] ''Kate Field's Washington'' (1895): 78.</ref> and a contributor to ''Century'' magazine and ''St. Nicholas'' magazine.<ref>De Benneville Randolph Keim, [https://books.google.com/books?id=AzxFAQAAMAAJ&dq=Kate+Foote&pg=PA98 ''Society in Washington''] (Harrisburg Publishing Company 1887): 98.</ref> She reported on Persian cats<ref>Kate Foote, [https://books.google.com/books?id=n08FAAAAQAAJ&dq=Kate+Foote+Persian&pg=PA342 "Pets from Persia"] ''St. Nicholas'' (March 1879): 342-347.</ref> and on varying opinions of the Washington Monument, among other topics.<ref>Kirk Savage, [https://books.google.com/books?id=G7HFGWyWOXsC&dq=Kate+Foote&pg=PA136 ''Monument Wars: Washington D. C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape''] (University of California Press 2009): 136. {{ISBN|9780520256545}}</ref> She also co-wrote a biography of her sister Harriet with their friend Maria Huntington.<ref>Maria Huntington and Kate Foote, ''Harriet Ward Foote Hawley'' (privately printed, 1880).</ref>
As a clubwoman, Foote was a charter member of the Washington D. C. chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and head of the Meriden chapter of the same organization.<ref name="Meriden" />
Some Chilkat woven blankets Kate Foote Coe acquired in or from Alaska were donated to the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=lbFGAQAAMAAJ&dq=Kate+Foote+Coe&pg=PA182 ''Report of the President of Yale University''] (1903): 182.</ref> In 2011, the museum made plans to repatriate one of the blankets, which was determined to have been removed from a "funerary context."<ref>[https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-10-11/html/2011-26179.htm "Notice of Intent To Repatriate a Cultural Item"] Peabody Museum of Natural History, ''Federal Register'' 76(196)(October 11, 2011).</ref> Coe also donated baskets that she acquired in Japan and India to the Peabody.<ref>George Grant MacCurdy, [https://books.google.com/books?id=7LQ7AQAAMAAJ&dq=Kate+Foote+Coe&pg=PA289 "Progress in Anthropology at Peabody Museum of Yale University"] ''Science'' (February 20, 1903): 289.</ref>
==Personal life== Foote married Andrew J. Coe, a judge, in 1895.<ref>[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/11625413/kate_foot_and_andrew_coe_engaged_1894/ "Miss Kate Foote is to Wed"] ''Inter Ocean'' (December 18, 1894): 5. via Newspapers.com{{open access}}</ref> They spent the first few months of their marriage in Venezuela, where Andrew was trying to recover his health. She was widowed when Judge Coe died two years later in 1897.<ref name="Meriden" /> In widowhood she lived with her younger sister, Elizabeth Foote Jenkins, in New Haven, Connecticut. Kate Foote Coe died in 1923, aged 83 years.<ref>[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/11625212/kate_foote_coe_died_1923/ "Woman Historian and Indian Authority Dies"] ''Houston Post'' (December 25, 1923): 15. via Newspapers.com{{open access}}</ref>
Her niece Margaret Foote Hawley was an artist who specialized in portrait miniatures.<ref>[http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artist/?id=2125 "Margaret Foote Hawley"] Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery.</ref>
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== *{{Find a Grave|12917383}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Coe, Kate Foote}} Category:1840 births Category:1923 deaths Category:People from Meriden, Connecticut Category:People from Guilford, Connecticut Category:American women journalists Category:American educators
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