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Catharine Paine Blaine

Legacy

Catharine Blaine lived to see her early history in Seattle commemorated in public events and locations. Catharine was present in November, 1905 when the Washington University State Historical Society placed a marker at the site of her first school in Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle. In addition, Blaine Street in Seattle is named for the Blaines.

Hansee Hall, University of Washington. A wing of the building was named in honor of Catharine Blaine in 1936. WSHS Collections.

Besides the plaque in downtown Seattle commemorating the first school, Catharine Blaine’s early efforts in Seattle education are memorialized in two places in the city — the Catharine Blaine Wing of Hansee Hall at the University of Washington, named in her honor in 1936 by the Board of Trustees and Catharine Blaine School in Seattle, named by the Seattle School Board in 1950.1 Catharine’s son Edward L. Blaine and grandson were present at the dedication of the school in 1952.2

Catharine Blaine’s son, E. L. Blaine and his wife Louisa, assisted by the Woman’s Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Church, established the Catharine P. Blaine Home honoring her in 1911.3 The home in Seattle was for Issei or immigrant Japanese women. The home helped young women transition to urban life and was located at 11th Avenue and East Terrace Street in Seattle. The Catharine P. Blaine Home was affiliated with the Blaine Memorial Methodist Church, a Japanese congregation, which was named for E. L. Blaine in 1956 for his efforts to help establish the church and preserve Japanese property during the internment of World War II.

Catharine Blaine Home, 11th Terrace, Seattle, WA, 1908, Blaine Memorial, First United Methodist Church, Seattle Archives.

The Blaine Home facility later had a kindergarten and a building for the Methodist Union for work with the Filipino Community. The building was used as a nursing center, then as a parsonage for the pastor of the Blaine Japanese Church and later for the pastor of the Filipino Methodist Episcopal Church, which acquired the property in the 1940s. The site has been re-developed and the building is no longer extant.

Catharine Paine’s signature on the Declaration of Sentiments was a bold statement for women’s rights but her adventurous life of a minister’s wife with the Methodist Church stretching across the continent was also a bold statement for education, equality and service. Her permanent imprints at Women’s Rights National Historical Park and in Seattle are testimony to her legacy of dedication to the principles of the Declaration of Sentiments.

Notes

  1. Information courtesy of Seattle Public Schools.
  2. “First Teacher in Seattle.” And Seattle School District Information
  3. Taylor, Mrs. E. F., "Catharine P. Blaine Home," pamphlet, Columbia University and history of Catharine Blaine Home, excerpt from History of Woman’s Work of First Methodist Church, Seattle, Washington, First United Methodist Church of Seattle Archives.

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