Married: Speed Smith Warren - January 1, 1878 - St. Clair County, Missouri
INFORMATION PROVIDED BY CONTRIBUTOR LINDA DUKES

Diane Euston writing at the New Santa Fe Trailer has put together and extensive summary of the lives of both Catherine and Simpson.

I've pasted the relevant section about Catherine below. You could probably write and ask Diane if you could post this to Catherine's FindAGrave page, or perhaps just summarize the relevant facts:

"Catherine Francis Younger (1847-1941), known as Kate, was Sim's older sister. Her choices throughout her life lead her down a more difficult path.

Kate attended Oberlin College from 1861-1862 and 1866-1869. When she received her inheritance at 21 years-old, is is reported by Becky Carlson, "She went to her mother, traveling as a white woman."

....That means she rode with the whites and did not "choose" the railroad cars for "darker passengers."

Her upbringing from eight years-old-on was with white people. She identified in the lighter pigment of her skin. Raised for over a decade by a white woman, Delia Shepard, Kate dined with whites, attended classes with whites, and socialized with whites.

Delia Shepard's daughter, Mrs. Elisha Gray, wrote, "Oberlin friends had warned her of her danger if she should marry any but a man of her own color. [Kate] said that having lived so long with white people she could not marry a mulatto."

Thus, Kate went down her own path of unfortunate unhappiness.

She had a short marriage to a white man and lived in Kentucky with their one child. When people discovered she wasn't pure white, her husband reportedly lost his business, left her and moved away.

Kate Younger Warren
In 1878, Kate married Speed Smith Warren (1850-1898) back home in St. Clair Co., Mo. Speed was the son of a well-known Lafayette Co. doctor and likely ended up in the area because his older brother, William Wilcox Warren was a reverend in Osceola.

She married another white man in a town that certainly knew she was born a slave.

She went onto have five children with Speed, moving for a time to Oklahoma- but she always returned to St. Clair Co. Probably a formidable fact for her, Kate was unable to give her children the same education that she was given. Mrs. Elisha Gray wrote that Kate "later took in washing, suffered the direst of poverty, but struggled to keep herself."

Even though several states separated them, Kate kept in contact with Mrs. Elisha Gray whom she had grown up with. Gray wrote that Kate's letters "were most pathetic telling of disappointments, cruel and unjust treatment from the whites with whom they were obliged to deal, and the misery of associating with the Negros of such low order."

Because of her DNA, openly mixed with slave and master, Kate was unable to fit into any group of people. Even with a solid education and light skin, she discovered, as her brother did, that acceptance was never guaranteed.

Kate is buried alongside her husband at the family cemetery northeast of Osceola. Speed is the only "pure" white man buried there."

Source: https://newsantafetrailer.blogspot.com/2019/02/an-ode-to-darker-youngers.html
Contributor: Brent Hugh (49138848)