Catherine Anne Warfield - Biography

Biography

Born in Natchez, Mississippi, Catherine was the oldest daughter of Sarah Percy and her second husband Major Nathaniel Ware, who had married in 1814. (Sarah's first husband was the older Judge John Ellis, with whom she had a son, Thomas George Ellis, and daughter, Mary Jane Ellis. He died in 1808.) Sarah Percy was from a prominent Southern family whose members had a vulnerability to mental illness.

Catherine and her sister Eleanor were raised primarily in Philadelphia after their mother’s hospitalization there for severe post-partum depression following Eleanor's birth (Sarah was 39 then). Sarah never fully recovered. Together with their half-sister Mary Jane Ellis, the Ware sisters attended the French-speaking academy of Mme. Aimee Sigoigne, a refugee from Haiti after its revolution.

Catherine began writing poetry with her younger sister Eleanor at an early age, and it reflects their sadness about their mother's condition. Following their mother's death in 1836, the sisters published two volumes together under the byline, "The Two Sisters of the West": The Wife of Leon (1843) and The Indian Chamber, And Other Poems (1846). Their father encouraged their writing and had commissioned printers in Cincinnati and New York, respectively, for the volumes. The poetry met with moderate success. Today it is criticized as par for its time, relying heavily on many gothic and sentimental contrivances.