By Katherine J. Rinehart and John Sheehy
Catherine “Kate” Hutton Lovejoy was born in 1833, in Malone, Franklin County, New York, just a stone’s throw away from the Quebec border. Her father, George H. Hutton, was Scottish immigrant who made chairs, her mother, Samantha (Barnes) Hutton, a spinner. Kate grew up in Malone with three siblings: sisters Emma and Belle, and brother Charles.
In 1855, she married Allen P. Lovejoy, a dentist, and moved to Springfield, Vermont, where Allen established a dental practice. In 1863, during the Civil War, the couple came west to Petaluma to join Allen’s father, John Lovejoy, also a dentist, who established a practice there in 1860. They were joined by Allen’s younger brother George, yet another dentist, and George’s wife Elizabeth.
After working briefly for their father, Allen and George established the Lovejoy Brothers Dentistry on Main Street. Beginning in 1864, Allen also became the town’s sole Western Union telegraph operator, having worked in the trade back east before studying dentistry. He set up a telegraph in his dental office. Kate and Allen purchased a home at 22 Sixth Street between A and B streets.
In 1869, Kate participated in forming the Sonoma County Woman Suffrage Association (SCWSA), and served as one of five delegates from the county to the inaugural California Woman Suffrage Association convention held at Dashaway Hall in San Francisco, on January 27-31, 1870. Kate was joined by Abigail Haskell, Lucretia Hatch, and Sarah R. Latimer of Petaluma, and Fanny M. Wertz of Healdsburg. In the spring of 1870, Kate became the second president of the SCWSA.
In January, 1871, she was a Sonoma County delegate to the Pacific Coast Woman Suffrage Association Convention held in San Jose. The new association was formed after the SCWSA and other suffrage groups broke away from the California Woman Suffrage Association due to internal conflicts.
In 1878, Kate and Allen Lovejoy signed their names to a woman suffrage petition sent to the California State Legislature demanding they enact a law enabling women to vote in presidential elections and amend the California State Constitution to establish equal political rights for all American citizens, irrespective of sex. Kate had signed a similar petition in 1870. Both petitions were buried in legislative committees, with no action taken.
It appears that Kate and Allen separated after June, 1880. Both left Petaluma, while retaining ownership of their Sixth Street house, which they rented out. Allen relocated briefly to Ferndale, before embarking on an occupation as a traveling dentist in Humboldt and Mendocino counties, with regular visits to Petaluma. Kate returned to her family in Malone to tend to the needs of her aging parents—her mother died in 1881, and her father in 1889—and to her sister Belle, who lived in Petaluma with the Lovejoys in the early 1870s, but by the end of the decade was committed to the Willard Asylum for the insane in Ovid, New York.
In 1885, Allen hung himself in the American Hotel while visiting Petaluma on an extended stay to remodel the Lovejoy house. The cause of death was attributed to his drinking and his being “short of coin,” i.e. deeply in debt. The house was left to Kate, who died in 1890 at the age of 57, after being stricken with erysipelas, a skin infection also known as St. Anthony’s Fire.
The Lovejoys’ house was sold to the owner of the Petaluma Argus, H. L. Weston, the following year. Weston moved it to the back of the lot, facing Post Street, and built a new house in its place. In the early 1970s, the Lovejoys’ house was torn down and replaced by a modern duplex.
SOURCES:
Letter from Ellen Dumas at the Franklin County Historical and Museum Society to Katherine J. Rinehart, July 22, 2020.
J.P. Munro-Fraser, History of Sonoma County (San Francisco: Alley, Bowen & Co., 1880), “A.P. Lovejoy,” pp. 564-565.
Ferndale Enterprise, “Notice,” January 6, 1882.
Franklin Gazette: “People vs. Lovejoy,” September 21, 1888; Kate Lovejoy obituary, May 16, 1890.
Petaluma Argus: Ad for George E. Lovejoy, dentist, June 24, 1863; “Telegraph,” March 10, 1864; “Dental Rooms,” July 23, 1868; “Good,” December 25, 1868; “Offices and Operators,” February 20, 1874; “Local Brevities,” April 15, 1881; “Personal and Social,” April 7, 1882; “Death of A.P. Lovejoy,” April 18, 1885.
Petaluma Courier: “Courierlets,” March 30, 1881; “Death from Suicide,” April 22, 1885; Kate Lovejoy estate, June 10, 1891; Kate Lovejoy estate, November 18, 1891; “Dr. George E. Lovejoy,” January 15, 1906.
Petaluma Argus-Courier, Bill Soberanes column, July 18, 1991.
San Francisco Chronicle, “Woman,” January 28, 1870.
Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel: “Card to the Public,” July 9, 1870; “Woman Suffrage Convention,” January 7, 1871.
Sonoma County Journal: ad for J. Lovejoy, dentist, July 27, 1860.
