Kate Chase, Dominant Daughter

Katherine Jane “Kate” Chase Sprague (1840-1899) was a Washington society hostess during the American Civil War. She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of politician Salmon Chase, who served as Treasury Secretary during President Abraham Lincoln’s first administration and later Chief Justice of the United States. She was educated at the Haines School in New York City, where she learned languages, elocution and the social graces along with music and history. On her return to Columbus, Ohio, she served as official hostess for her father, the newly elected Governor of Ohio. In 1861, Salmon P. Chase became Secretary of the Treasury in Lincoln’s administration and set up residence at 6th and E Streets Northwest in Washington, with Kate as his hostess; her soirees were eagerly attended in the nation’s capital, and she effectively became the “Belle of the North.” She married Rhode Island Governor William Sprague, a textile magnate, on November 12, 1863.

Kate Chase, Dominant Daughter represents genuine research. Author Mary Merwin Phelps first went to Philadelphia to gather available material in the archives of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, and next to Washington, to examine the Chase papers in the Library of Congress. “They will require six months merely to read,” she was told on the morning of her arrival in the Manuscript Division. The author remained a year and a half in Washington, building up the Chase characters and the scene. She visited the Chase home of the Sixties, where Kate Chase was married to Governor Sprague, and Edgewood, three miles north of the Capitol, where Kate Chase died in 1899. Phelps then went to Rhode Island to gather scraps of material still left on the Sprague terrain, and met the few living persons who knew Kate Chase and her husband. A long and devoted quest was consummated with the publication of Kate Chase, Dominant Daughter in 1935.