By William “Skip” Deegans
Withers and Anne Waller lived on a thousand-acre farm on the Potomac River at Clifton, Virginia. The family operated one of the largest seine fisheries in the United Sates. Among their ten children were Caroline and Katherine, called Kate. Caroline married John North Caldwell and settled in Greenbrier County where Caldwell farmed.
Her sister, Kate, took a different path. When she died the Richmond Times-Dispatch described her as “one of the most distinguished women of Virginia history.”
In 1876, Kate Waller married Robert S. Barrett, an Episcopal minister. The Barretts moved to a poor area of Richmond where a young unmarried girl with an infant came to the rectory for help. The experience of witnessing the girl’s misfortune had a profound impact on Kate Barrett. The family moved to Kentucky and Atlanta where Kate received a medical degree from the Women’s Medical College of Georgia in 1892. Two years later, she completed a nursing course at the Florence Nightingale Training School in London. With financial help from Charles Nelson Crittenton, a wealthy New York philanthropist, she started a rescue home for unmarried pregnant girls where they could find refuge, care, and education.
The Barretts moved to Alexandria, Virginia in 1896 where Robert Barrett died that same year, leaving Kate with six children. With continued financial help from Crittenton, Dr. Barrett and Crittenton established the National Florence Crittenton Mission (NFCM) with Dr. Barrett as vice-president and general superintendent. By 1909, NFCM had grown to 78 homes in the United States, Mexico, France, China and Japan and Dr. Barrett had become its president. Despite growing up in the south and the daughter of a slave owner and former Confederate officer, Dr. Barrett set up an NFCM mission for blacks and with a black staff. She helped a black refuge center in Topeka, Kansas, pay off its mortgage and become a NFCM.
In addition to her work with NFCM, Dr. Barrett became a national force around women’s issues. She was a leader in the International Council of Women, founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to improve the condition of women worldwide. In 1911, she was elected president of the National Council of Women. She was elected state regent for the Virginia Daughters of The American Revolution. President Woodrow Wilson sent her as a delegate in 1919 to the International Congress of Women in Zurich, Switzerland. Among Dr. Barrett’s concerns were working conditions for women and children, prostitution, sex trafficking and sexually transmitted diseases.
She was actively involved in the women’s suffrage movement in Virginia and campaigned for ratification of the nineteenth amendment. She was a founding member of the Virginia League of Women Voters and active in Democratic Party politics. In 1924 she gave a memorable speech at the Democratic National Convention and was encouraged to run for governor of Virginia, but declined due to ill health. When she died in 1925, the flag was lowered at Virginia’s capitol – the first time for a woman.
Sources: Library of Virginia, Alexandria Library, Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Boston Globe, The West Virginia News.
