Jefferson County Historical Society submitted the following article on historian Kate M. Scott:
Submitted by Carole Briggs
MC., MARY J., AND KATE M. SCOTT
Tracing the genealogy of the woman known to county residents as historian Kate M. Scott turned up some interesting information about names. Kate was the oldest daughter of John Armat Scott and Hannah Canan (or Cannon) Gray.
When the census taker came around to the Scott household in Ebensburg in 1840, the names of Mrs. Scott and the children were not required. The census taker was only required to list the head of household, and the sex and age category of the people living there. In John Armat’s household, there were two adults between the ages of 20 and 49 and a female child under the age of 5, presumably a young Kate.
When 1850 rolled around, the names of all household members were required by the census taker. Hannah (age 35) and children named M. C. (12), Caroline (9), Sarah E. (6), Alice B. (4), and Joseph C. (1) are listed along with Margaret Gray (age 46). We assume M. C. was Mary Catherine.
By 1860 the household had grown to include Mary J. (20), Caroline (18), Lizzie (15), Alice (13), Armet J. (10), Ama (7), and Alonzo (5). John and Margery Gray are living there, too. Here we know the M is for Mary, but do not know what the J may have stood for.
Finally, the 1870 United States Census lists John, Kate M., Carrie, Emma, Alonzo along with John and Margery Gray.
Knowing that the parents in this household are John Armat and Hannah Gray Scott and recognizing Carrie as Caroline, Emma, and Alonzo, and knowing the ages of the female child identified as “under 5,” then M. C., Mary J., and Kate M. leads one to believe that they all identify the woman recognized today as Kate M. Scott,
But why did she become Kate?
In the preface to her 1877 history of the 105th, Kate M. Scott wrote, “In December, 1861, in response to a call from the officers of the One Hundred and Fifth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers for persons to volunteer to nurse the sick of the regiment, the writer, in company with Misses Ellen Guffey, Mary G. Fryer, and Mary P. Allen, joined the regiment at Camp Jamison, Virginian…”
Three nurses named Mary? That might be confusing to the doctors and patients. One might surmise that at this point in her life, M. C. or Mary J. decided to partially solve the problem by becoming Kate, most likely the short form of Catherine, possibly the C listed in 1850.
And, so it may have been when the daughter of John and Hannah Scott returned from Camp Jamison in the spring of 1862, she said, “Call me Kate!”
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