Catharine Meredith Schwartz

Profile Photo: Watercolor of women in Schenley Park, Pittsburgh, by Catharine M. Schwartz

Biography

Catharine Meredith Schwartz was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Thomas Meredith Schwartz and Caroline Richards Schwartz (nee Dey) in 1883. She was trained through the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's Children's Librarian Training School, and worked with her sister, Anna Schwartz at the library from around 1908 to 1917. She worked at the Lawrenceville and South Side branches, volunteered with the Carnegie's Home Library Program, and served on the faculty of the Children's Librarian Training School. In 1917, she was hired as a children's librarian at the New York Public Library, where she contributed to Anne Carroll Moore's "The Three Owls" (vol. 2) children's literature review. In 1924, her life partner, Ethelwyn Manning was hired by Helen Clay Frick to head up the Frick Art Library, a position she held until 1947. Catharine and Ethelwyn lived in mid-town Manhattan, summering on Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick with other librarians and writers, including Willa Cather and Edith Lewis. They are both featured in an oral history of Grand Manan called "Cottage Girls and Whale Cove Cottages." By 1950, they were retired (Ethelwyn only semi-retired) and living in Yorktown, Westchester County, New York. They later moved to an apartment in Springvale Apartments in Croton-on-Hudson. Catharine was an avid watercolorist. In fact, the 1910 census lists her as an "artist" rather than a librarian, though she was clearly working at the Carnegie by that time. Find a Grave Memorial 156787233

BOOK REVIEW

Review of Robert J. Spiller, The Cottage Girls and Whale Cove Cottages: An Oral History . Edited by Jocelyne L. Thompson, New Ed.
Fredericton: University of New Brunswick Libraries, 2020.
Heidi Macdonald
University of New Brunswick (Saint John)
1. In the early 19th century, Whale Cove Cottages on Grand Manan Island began hosting a special cohort of summer cottagers: adventuresome literary American feminists, the most famous of whom was Pulitzer-prizewinning Willa Cather (1873–1947). This charming and unique history of these American ‘cottage girls’ is primarily a literal transcription of interviews conducted by Robert Spiller in 1986, updated and edited by University of New Brunswick librarian Jocelyne Thompson, and republished in UNB Libraries’ New Brunswickana Project (https://lib.unb.ca/newbrunswickana). There are twenty historical photos in this book, eighteen of which are new to this edition.

2. The summer cottage community grew from the first cottage, purchased along with twenty acres of land by Sarah Jacobus, Sarah Adams, and Marie Felix in 1902, to several cottages and an inn that served meals, and, more importantly, hosted a daily cocktail hour. Spiller’s interview participants were either local Grand Mananers who cooked and served the cottagers’ meals, did their laundry, and provided them with other supports, including caretaker Red Flagg, and cooks and maids Kathleen Tatton and Kathleen Buckley, or cottagers themselves, such as Helen Southwick (niece of Willa Cather, who inherited Cather Cottage) and Barbara Coney Silbur (niece of cottage owner Alice Coney, who inherited a share of the original cottage). The Grand Mananers’ observations are a mixture of speculation and facts about the American women’s impressions of Grand Manan and their impact on local culture. For example, Helen Southwick noted of her aunt Willa Cather, “she didn’t come to socialize; she came here to work. She was very fond of the quiet” (46). While Cather liked the quiet, she apparently didn’t like the food, and when one cook left the inn, Cather encouraged Kathleen Buckley to take on the job. Most of the observations on both sides were highly positive and respectful, usually focusing on the cottagers’ exoticism, including their smoking habits and car ownership.

3. As local resident Kathleen Buckley explained, “The Cottage Girls had a very good time here. They … used to go hiking all over the place…. And they went on canoe trips with the Indians who would come over from Pleasant Point. They tried to get a library going and were active in getting the town halls started…. They were Democrats and thought the labor movement would amount to many things…. They had their ideas and their standards, and they lived up to them” (56). Such passages suggest that the early cottagers had a reformist spirit common among middle-class women of the age, and I can’t help but assume that the earlier generation were suffragists, though that topic did not come up in the interviews. Neither were class differences raised explicitly; while the locals’ observations implied respect and even awe, they did not comment on the cottagers’ privilege, or the class differences with the locals who served them.

4. On some level this oral history is a border study because Grand Manan is equidistant to the east coasts of Maine and New Brunswick. Yet where many border studies emphasize the commonalities between Americans and Canadians and the porous nature of the border, this book highlights their differences. This may be more because the cottage girls were urban and middle class while the locals were rural and working class. It is somewhat disappointing that this updated version did not address these issues of class and gender, especially given how much historical scholarship has been published since the first edition appeared in 1986. Nevertheless, the book is an engaging account of mutual respect between the cottage girls and locals, with much credit to the cottage girls for bringing an intellectual and feminist culture to a largely isolated Grand Manan.

To comment on this review, please write to editorjnbs@stu.ca. Si vous souhaitez réagir à cet compte rendu, veuillez soit nous écrire à editorjnbs@stu.ca.
Heidi MacDonald is Dean of Arts and Professor of History and Politics at UNB, Saint John. She is the author of the forthcoming We Shall Persist: Suffrage and Human Rights in Atlantic Canada (UBC Press).

Catherine Manning

1930 United States Federal Census

• Name Catherine M Schwartz
• Birth Year abt 1883
• Gender Female
• Race White
• Age in 1930 47
• Birthplace Pennsylvania
• Marital Status Single
• Relation to Head of House Head
• Homemaker? Yes
• Home in 1930 Manhattan, New York, New York, USA
• Street Address East 51st Bet 1st and 2nd Ave
• Ward of City A. D. 12
• Block C
• House Number 306
• Dwelling Number 31
• Family Number 132
• Home Owned or Rented: Rented
• Home Value 90
• Radio Set No
• Lives on Farm No
• Attended School No
• Able to Read and Write Yes
• Father's Birthplace Pennsylvania
• Mother's Birthplace New Jersey
• Occupation Libraian
• Industry Public Library
• Class of Worker Wage or salary worker
• Employment Yes
• Neighbors View others on page
• Household members Name Age

Catherine M Schwartz 47
Ethel W Manning 40

in the 1940 United States Federal Census

• Name Catherine Manning [Catherine Schwartz]
• Age 56
• Estimated Birth Year abt 1884
• Gender Female
• Race White
• Birthplace Pennsylvania
• Marital Status Single
• Relation to Head of House Partner
• Home in 1940 East 31st Street, New York, New York, New York
• Inferred Residence in 1935 New York, New York, New York
• Residence in 1935 New York
• Sheet Number 1B
• Occupation Librarian
• Industry Nyp Library
• Attended School or College No
• Highest Grade Completed College, 1st year
• Hours Worked Week Prior to Census 40
• Class of Worker Wage or salary worker in Government work
• Weeks Worked in 1939 52
• Income $2220
• Income Other Sources Yes
• Neighbors View others on page
• Household Members (Name) Age Relationship

Ethelwyn Manning 54 Head: Catherine Manning 56 Partner

Single lady. Actually, according to 1940 census, she was listed as a partner of Ethelwyn Manning. Both women were Librarians.

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Jan 17 2019, 17:34:30 UTC
• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Nov 17 2022, 11:33:04 UTC schwartz
• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Nov 7 2018, 19:22:16 UTC DeWalt