Biography
Barrett was born Katherine Harwood Waller at her family's historic estate, Clifton, in Falmouth, Virginia, to Ann Eliza Stribbling Waller and Withers Waller on January 24, 1857. Her family owned slaves on several large plantations, and Barrett's two young black playmates named Jane and Lucy were “given” to young Kate as a birthday gift by her grandmother when she was six. Later regretting these circumstances, Barrett stated “I looked upon them as mine by ‘divine right’ and many were the lessons of cruelty and lack of appreciation of the rights of others cultivated in me.”
Katherine Waller attended Arlington Institute for Girls in Alexandria, Virginia after the Civil War. On July 19, 1876, she married Robert South Barrett (1851-1896), the young Episcopal minister fresh out of seminary, recently assigned to the nearby Aquia Church. It was while traveling with and assisting her husband with his work in Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia, that she first became aware of the social problems that would become her life's work to help alleviate.
In particular, soon after Robert South Barrett, Jr, the first of their six children, was born in Richmond, Virginia, a young unmarried woman with her own child begged for help at their door. Providing her with a meal, the Barretts listened as she told of being deserted by a man who had promised marriage. In Kate’s mind, she compared the young mother and child with herself and her firstborn, and noted many striking similarities. Furthermore, from her own experiences as a slaveholder and with Jim Crow laws, Kate Barrett also realized how spirits could be broken by degradation. Barrett concluded that only luck separated her from the young woman in her home, one of them falling in love with a “good” man and one with a “bad” one. Profoundly moved by her new-found bond with this “fallen” woman, she vowed, “By the power of God that rules the Universe, I would spend my life trying to wipe out some of the inequalities that were meted out to my sisters who were so helpless to help themselves.”
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