Catharine Paine Blaine
New York and Pennsylvania
At the 1862 Oregon Annual Conference, Reverend Blaine asked for and was given a leave of absence for one year, and he took his family back to New York. Though he spent the next three years ministering in the Pacific Northwest, it is unclear if his family joined him, as census and other records show that the Blaines' daughter, Martha, was born March 8, 1864 in Seneca Falls. In 1866 Blaine was located at his own request — leaving the Oregon Conference and moving back east.
In 1866, David Blaine received an appointment as the substitute pastor at the Methodist Church in Cazenovia, N.Y. No further appointments are on record in Methodist archives in New York before 1871. In 1870, the family was in Waterloo, N.Y., where David Blaine was listed as a farmer in the New York Agricultural Census and a farmer and preacher in population census records.1 The Blaines kept horses, cows, and pigs, and raised corn, oats, wheat, buckwheat and potatoes on 65 acres of farmland. In 1870, the meat, crops and 500 lbs. of butter produced by the Blaines was valued at $1400.00. Now 45 and 40 years of age, the Blaines held $7000 in real estate and $2670 in personal wealth. Their children, John J., Edward L., and Martha L., aged 14, 8, and 6, attended school. Not much is known of the Blaines' opinions about the newly freed slaves or about the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War, but their household was one of very few in Waterloo, N.Y. to include an African-American among its members. Sixteen year old Mary Whitmore was a domestic servant. Fifty year old farm laborer Hamilton McElwain also lived with the Blaines.2
In 1871 D. E. Blaine was re-admitted to the East Genesee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and served in the Junius, New York. After reorganization of Conferences placed Junius in the Central New York Conference, D. E. Blaine served a second year in Junius.3
David Blaine also returned to Seattle in 1873 to sell products of the National Yeast Company of Seneca Falls and secured lots in downtown Seattle in Denny’s addition.4 By Catharine’s death in 1908, two of those lots were valued at $50,000.5
As their children grew to adulthood, David and Catharine Blaine served in churches in Junius, New York from 1871 to 1873; Gaines, New York from 1873 to 1874; Mainsburg, Pennsylvania from November 1874 to October 1876; Reading Center and Pine Grove, New York from October 1876 to October 1878 (another account lists 1879); Hopewell Center, New York, from October 1878 to October 1879, and Allen’s Hill, New York, from October 1879 to October 1882.6