| Catharine Merrill |
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1824-1900
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- Indiana teacher and author, one of the first woman professors in America.
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Serving as a nurse in the field and in other war work during the Civil War, she was recruited after the war by Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton to write a history of Indiana's solidiers in the conflict. Her resulting book, The Soldier of Indiana in the War for the Union (2 vol, 1866, 1869) has been ranked as the most comprehensive history of Indiana's part in the Civil War.
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- Revered by three generations of Indianapolis students, Merrill first operated a private school from the family home. In 1869 she became a professor at North Western Christian University (now Butler University) as the Demia Butler chair of English Literature, where she served until l885. After that time she returned to private teaching.
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- John Muir met Catharine
Merrill when he first lived in Indianapolis, introduced by Professor J.D.
Butler, one of Muir's professors at the University of Wisconsin. He called
Merrill's gifts "rare," credited her with being a "builder of character" and
observed that to know her "was a liberal education." Catharine's
nephew,
Merrill Moores, also became a friend of
Muir's and traveled with him on botanizing expeditions in the midwest and
Yosemite.
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- John Muir wrote a moving tribute to Catharine Merrill, "Words from an Old Friend," which was published in The Man Shakespeare and other Essays By Catharine Merrill With Impressions And Reminiscences Of The Author By Melville B. Anderson, And With Some Words of Appreciation From John Muir, (Indianapolis, The Bowen-Merrill Company, 1902), p. 32 et seq.
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| Portrait from The Man Shakespeare (1902) |
