Catherine Simpson

The daughter of a farmer from Isle of Man, Catherine Simpson was born in Illinois but grew up in Texas, in the farm lands around the growing metropolis that would one day be Dallas. Details of her life are rare due to different last names across two marriages. But details on her husbands are scarcer.

Catherine must have given birth to her first two children, Hosea and Sarah, before finally marrying J H Higgins in Feb.1876 and giving birth to her third child, Lizzie, in March 1877. (The 1900 census of Yuma, Arizona, confirms her three children, two still living -- Sarah must have died young.) The name Higgins shows up again on Lizzie's death certificate and nowhere else. What happened to J H -- or where he came from -- is entirely unknown. But the owner of the property next-door, detailed in several deeds, is Higgins .... perhaps she formed a bond with the nearest available man?

Catherine officially divorced James in 1886, and shortly remarried: The "Simpson" name she stuck with later in life came from her second husband, George Washington Simpson. Note that her daughter gave the same name to her first-born son.

Concrete evidence of Catherine's life beyond Census records comes from Denton county property records: With her parents; the Simpson family and new Speer family sold their land in Texas for $600 and moved West, to Arizona. Catherine Simpson is listed in the Yuma Census of 1900 and 1910 -- widowed in the later record, suggesting the fate of her last love.

Catherine died in 1919 at age 77. She was buried in Yuma's Pioneer Cemetery. In an unmarked grave. Does George Washington lie beside her in another?