Posted on by Tara Brooky

Mrs. [Catherine B.] James Casey Coale

Very little is recorded about Mrs. James Casey Coale or her husband outside of the one instance she was mentioned in the Club’s minutes. In the minutes her two novels, The Cottage by the Sea and Lelia the Hindoo Girl, were inducted to the library making her an honorary member on Meeting of April 9th, 1901.

My research began with her husband, Mr. James Casey Coale. I discovered his Ancestry.com page and found out he was an Insurance Agent married to an illusive “Catherine B.” Catherine B.’s Ancestry.com page had even less sources than her husband’s, making it very hard to tell if this is the woman I have been searching for. Since both James and Catherine lived in Baltimore the same time time frame as the club, I assume this was the right couple.

Mrs. Coale was born in Maryland, 1823. Mr. Coale was born in 1826, making him 3-4 years younger than his wife. Mrs. Coale gave birth to one and only child, a daughter by the name of Elizabeth Coale in 1849. Mr. Coale died April 13th, 1891.

On the census Mrs. Coale’s occupation is listed as “Keeping House” rather than “At Home” as most women have listed at the time. On the same census, three Irish immigrants are listed as “servants” in the Coale’s household. This indicates the Coale’s were most likely well-off. Because they were wealthy, it bugs me that this was the extent of information I could find on the Coale family.

Posted on by Tara Brooky

Uncovering Lucy Randolph Cautley

Passport photo of Lucy Randolph Cautley when she was 54 years old. From Ancestory.com

Mrs. Cautley, who published under the name of L.R. Cautley was born July 19th, 1854 in Richmond, Henrico, Virginia. Her maiden name is Lucy Randolph Daniel.

It is unclear when she married her husband Richard K. Cautley. But it would be sometime after 1880 census which reordered her as single and living in Virginia still, she was 26 at the time. It is likely that after she married her husband that she moved to Baltimore with him.

Cautley shared a ton of short stories and poems within the Club. However, few of her works were ever published. What I could find was an essay on Rudyard Kipling’s works and a poem titled “Betrayal” that appeared in Harper’s Monthly. The poem used personification to convey emotions in a unique and engaging way. My favorite lines from the poem were,

“And all the little world around her smiled,

By memories of their own fair youth beguiled.”

After her husband, Richard K. Cautley died, she relocated to New York on 0ctober 19th, 1923 to be with her oldest son who worked at Cornell University as an engineering instructor. She was 69 when she first arrived. She had two other sons. In 1911 and 1912 her and two sons were listed as students during the summer sessions at Cornell for those years.

Cautley strongly identifies as a Southern woman. This is evident because she was an officer for at least 6 years (known) for the New York division of the United Daughters of Confederacy.

She was highly educated and mentioned in one of her letters to the editor of the New York Times that she studied in Northern Italy at one point in her life.

Posted on by Tara Brooky

In search of Cautley, Coale, and Cloud

Last week I took my first jab at researching some of these women in the club. I found the work incredibly meticulous and overall frustrating. I felt like I was sifting through virtual piles of forgotten texts and coming up empty-handed. Yet when I finished the assignment I felt like I really was not finished at all. I was ready to keep going, it is cheesy but the more I found about these women, the more questions I had.

L. R. Cautley or Lucy Randolph Cautley was pretty active within the club. She shared lots of articles throughout her time as a member. They seemed to be short stories and essays never published. What I did find online of hers was sparse in comparison to the amount she shared at club meetings. Cautley had a fascination with Rudyard Kipling, the author of the Jungle Book. She shared with the club a few things she wrote about his work and in 1901 had an essay about his work published. This seemed to be the most notable thing she had ever published. Although she was not known for poetry, she did have a poem published in Harper’s Monthly. The only other things I could find on her were three copyrights of dramas with authorship by her. I could not find any text on them, if they were ever performed, or sold, or any other reason which would draw her to want to copyright them. I hope to solve that mystery in my second phase of research on her.

Mrs. James Casey Coale really frustrated me in research. I only found she was mentioned in the minutes as presenting two of her published books to the club to keep in their library. She was not an official member of the club as far as I could tell. Her book The Cottage by the Sea was insanely easy to find. But the other book seems to have never existed, and maybe for a good reason, it was titled Leila the Hindoo Girl, so I can only imagine the type of material it contained. I think what I found most frustrating about Coale was that she exclusively goes her husband’s name, but her husband can not be found anywhere! Hopefully in phase two of the research I can find out who Mr. James Casey Coale was and thus, find out more about who the Mrs. was.

Virginia Woodward Cloud was an extremely active member inside and out the club. She was a popular poet whose poems are still popping up in recent anthologies and/or reprints. It is very refreshing to me that people have held on to Cloud’s poetry and continue to make her selections available online. I am excited to start reading some of her works and uncover some forgotten ones. Also, she seemed to be a very well-liked woman within the club. Since she was a bit more revered than other women at the time, I hope this allows for me to find out more about her aspects of life through research.