Kate Heffelfinger, weakened from her hunger strike, wrapped in a blanket, as she leaves jail on November 27th 1917. Heffelfinger was a militant suffragist from Shamokin, Northumberland County Pa.
At the age of 18, Kate Heffelfinger, and art student, joined the Suffragist splinter group created by Alice Paul. She was one of the silent sentinels in the pickets targeting President Wilson in 1917, and took part in the hunger strike at Occoquan.
She, along with the others at the Occoquan workhouse chose to serve a prison term rather than pay the fine. When the suffragettes arrived at the prison, these wealthy society women were then treated terribly, given horrible accommodations, rotten food, and allowed no communication from outside of the jail. Along with leader Alice Paul, Heffelinger joined in the hunger strike at the prison, and ended up being force fed in the prison hospital, before being released 5 weeks into her term. The convictions would later be overturned as unconstitutional.
After her release, Heffelinger was one of the Ex -prisoners who then began traveling to speak of her treatment during incarceration, as part of a determined lobbying campaign to push the suffrage amendment through Congress.
In a 1920 book on the Suffragist movement, page 240 states that "more bizarre was the action of Kate C. Heffelfinger", who induced a "human fly" to cry out". [Unfortunately, this snippet is all I have access to, I was unable to find the full article. I include it here in the hopes I can find the rest at a later date].
In 1920, Heffelfinger was back in her family home in Shamokin, and running for a seat in congress. She planned to oppose the Hon. William C. McConnel for a seat in the state senate.
According to local papers, "her two older brothers and her parents are exceedingly proud of her interest and activities in politics." Miss Heffelfinger stated that her inspiration for running was Thor - her bulldog.
"This is a sad announcement for the women of Northumberland County. Just think of such a catastrophe, the very first woman to announce her candidacy should receive her inspiration from a bull pup. She says "Thor has absolute faith in me, and looks to me for everything. I just have to do something to prove worthy of such devotion and loyalty."
In an eerie premonition, the Miltonian criticized further, saying " Now this is just what the level-headed statesmen of this country most feared during all the years that women have been seeking the ballot. They feared that the idle rich, who loved only a dog, a cat, or a parrot, would be the only women who would seek office...."
As patronizing as that may sound to our modern ears, Kate would in fact go on to hoard animals, as well as hoarding junk, in the family home, piling wrappers and old magazines around antique furniture, a suit of armor, and fine china, while sleeping on hay bales stacked by the door, with chickens running wild through the house and the oven packed full of egg shells. The Department of Health intervened at least twice, as the once stately Hefflinger property became a menace and a health hazard, overrun with stray animals.
She was an eccentric, woman, who used her natural eccentricities and passion to attain the right to vote for women.
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Here's a much more in depth look at what Kate was involved in, during this pivotal time of U.S. History.
Suffragette Kate Heffelfinger of Shamokin, PA.
1889-1958
Kathryn Cleaver Heffelfinger was born on November 17th 1889, the daughter of Elmer and Kate [Cleaver] Heffelfinger of Shamokin Pa. The Heffelfinger family was affluent. Elmer E. Heffelfinger was a newspaper publisher, at at one time published the Weekly Herald, from which The Daily Herald was later developed. He later became a prominent real estate dealer.
Kate's maternal grandfather, Kimber C. Cleaver, was "identified with members of the Douty family of engineers in laying out most of the town plot of Shamokin, and in the early history of the community was a large land owner. " Cleaver was one of the first to erect a homestead on the site now known as Academy Hill, where the the Heffelfinger residence was located.
In October of 1939, Kate's brother Reynell C. Heffelfinger died. Part of his obituary read: "The sudden death of Heffelfinger is unusually sad because of the fact that for some years he had been the only and almost constant companion of his invalid aged mother and a sister, Miss Kate C. Heffelfinger, who with a nephew, William Heffelfinger of Philadelphia, are the only immediate survivors."
Kate's mother died a year, later, in 1940. By all accounts, Kate was extremely effected by her mothers death. A local dentist had made a death mask of the elder Kathryn, and Kate was very attached to that mask.
A hammer confiscated from a suffragette, used as part of the window-smashing campaign,
London, England
The Suffragist Movement Split
NAWSA & The CU [Later The NWP]
To understand Heffelfingers role in the suffragist movement, it's important to understand a bit about the history of the various suffragist organizations, and how they were proceeding with their efforts at the time.
A church in England, set ablaze by suffragettes.
Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Women Suffrage Association [NAWSA] insisted that the American organization would not be like England. In November of 1913, Lucy Burns was arrested for chalking meeting notices on sidewalk in Washington, D.C. She paid the $1.00 fine. The incident elicited a sharp rebuke from Shaw, including admonition that “we will not be like England.”
Alice Paul, leader of the National Womens Party
In April of 1910, Alice Paul returned to the USA after serving time in a Longons prison for suffrage activities in London. She addressed the National American Woman Suffrage Association [NAWSA], where she endorsed the militant tactics of British suffragettes, and described their campaign as a "war of men and women working together against politicians."
In December of 1912, Paul was appointed chairman of NAWSA's congressional committee, with the aim of obtaining the right for women voting at a federal level, not by individual state. The NAWSA organization considered the federal action so unimportant that it budgeted just $10 annually for this congressional committee.
Paul, told to raise her own funds, was undaunted. She believed strongly that the amendment needed to come from a federal level and could not be left up to individual states. Under Paul's leadership, the committee planned a big parade for March 3rd. The date, one day before the inauguration of President Wilson, was chosen purposefully, designed to put immediate pressure on the president-elect to support the National suffrage initiative.
Distributing hand bills advertising Inaugural Suffrage Parade and inviting everyone to participate Jan. [19]13. Mrs. Wm Kent talking to ? [man not identified]
More than 8,000 participated in the parade. Police stood by as spectators attacked the demonstrators. Army troops had to be dispatched to restore order, and more than 100 women were hospitalized with injuries. A congressional investigation was later held into the lack of adequate police protection for the march
In April of 1913, Alice Paul founded the CU - the Congressional Union For Women's suffrage. The CU and the Congressional Committee were separate entities, but confusingly, both had the exact same executive board, the same mission, and Paul was the chair of both committees. During a convention in November of 1913, Carrie Chapman Catt questioned the respective roles of the Congressional Committee and the CU, and suggested fiscal impropriety by Alice Paul.
After months of disagreeing over authority, finances, and strategy, NAWSA leadership told Paul she could remain chair of the Congressional Committee only if she resigned from the CU. Paul refused. In February of 1914, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and Dora Lewis met one last time with the NAWSA executive board, in an effort to resolve differences. They were unable to do so, and NAWSA voted against admitting CU as an auxiliary member.
That meant that in 1914, there were two wholly separate American Suffragist organizations - The National Womens Suffrage Movement, and the CU, although the CU would not apply for a National Charter until the following year.
In April of 1914, Rheta Childe Dorr, "disgruntled with Alice Paul’s autocratic manner and her failure to consult with Dorr on staffing issues", resigned as editor of The Suffragist. The position of business manager was abolished & Lucy Burns assumed the editor’s position.
In June of 1914, the Congressional Union formed yet another subcommittee, the National Advisory Council. This new committee had two main objectives: enlist the support of wealthy prominent women, and block all democratic candidates running for office, since it was the democratic party that had blocked earlier passage of the suffrage amendment.
This effort successfully made the suffrage movement a major political issue in many of the races.
After the CU adopted a constitution and restructured their organization to be a National organization, and despite objection from NAWSA, the CU sent organizers into every state to plan conventions and establish financially independent branches. On December 17th 1915, members of the CU and NAWSA met in Washington D.C. in an attempt to explore reconciliation between the two groups. Paul would not accept Catt's conditions, and the meeting ended badly.
In June of 1916, the CU formed the National Woman's Party, the worlds first women's political party. Their goal was to remain independent of existing political parties and campaigned on the immediate passage of the federal woman suffrage movement. The NWP replaced the CU in states where women had the right to vote, and the CU continued to exist in states where the suffrage law had not been passed. The two groups co-existed for nearly a year, before they were united into one single organization, the NWP.
By 1916, nine U.S. states had given women the right to vote. Although President Wilson supported suffrage on a state level, he opposed the federal amendment, and Paul and the NWP decided to aim their protests directly at him.
In August of 1916, the NWP refused to endorse either Presidential candidate, although the Republican candidate publicly supported the suffrage movement. The NWP continued to oppose all Democratic congressional candidates on the policy of "holding the party in power responsible" for failure to pass the suffrage amendment.
President Wilson was reelected by a narrow margin, on November 7th 1916. Several suffragists positioned themselves behind the first row in the balcony, and when President began his annual address to Congress, they unfurled a banner reading "Mr. President, what will you do for women's suffrage?" In January of 1917, 300 women met with President Wilson, asking him to use his influence to promote the women's suffrage amendment. Wilson angrily refused, and walked out on the delegation.
The Silent Picketing then began.
In January 1917, right before Wilson’s second term began, women began gathering outside the White House every day, regardless of the weather. They wore distinctive purple, white and gold sashes and held signs with slogans like “Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait for Liberty?”
The "Silent Sentinels" carried out their protests on a rotating basis, ensuring a constant presence at the White House. President Wilson invited the protestors in to the White House for coffee, but that offer was declined.
"As soon as the regular picket line began to be accepted as a matter of course, we undertook to touch it up a bit to sustain public interest. State days were inaugurated, beginning with Maryland. The other states took up the idea with enthusiasm. There was a College Day, when women representing 15 American colleges stood on the line; a Teachers’ Day, which found the long line represented by almost every state in the Union, and a Patriotic Day, when American flags mingled with the party’s banners carried by representatives of the Women’s Reserve Corps, Daughters of the Revolution and other patriotic organizations. And there were professional days when women doctors, lawyers and nurses joined the picket appeal.
Lincoln’s birthday anniversary saw another new feature. A long line of women took out banners bearing the slogans: LINCOLN STOOD FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE 60 YEARS AGO.MR. PRESIDENT, WHY DO YOU BLOCK THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT TO-DAY?" - Stevens, in Jailed For Freedom
On April 6th 1917, the U.S. entered into World War I. The silent sentinels, who had been patiently tolerated and treated as a curiosity for months, were now viewed as unforgivably unpatriotic, as they attacked the President.
Although the women were protesting peacefully, the crowds that came to heckle them were not always so peaceful, and the area in front of the White House gates was constantly chaotic, with crowds ripping banners from the women, jeering, and even the supporters became a nuisance as they crowded the streets and blocked traffic.
"The heightened patriotic fervor made criticism of the government more and more fraught, and members of the suffrage movement suffered for their outspoken and visible criticism of the president." https://library.arlingtonva.us/2019/11/12/this-week-in-19th-amendment-history-the-night-of-terror/
Doris Stevens wrote, of the silent sentinels, in her memoir Jailed For Freedom: "Yet, of course, we enjoyed irritating them. Standing on the icy pavement on a damp, wintry day in the penetrating cold of a Washington winter, knowing that within a stone’s throw of our agony there was a greater agony than ours—there was a joy in that! .....
We were standing at the gates of the White House because the American Congress had become so supine that it could not or would not act without being compelled to act by the President. They knew that if they howled at us it would only afford an opportunity to retort—“Very well then, if you do not like us at the gates of your leader; if you do not want us to ‘insult’ the President, end this agitation by taking the matter into your own hands and passing the amendment.” Such a suggestion would be almost as severe a shock as our picketing. The thought of actually initiating legislation left a loyal Democratic follower transfixed."
"Embarrassing to say these things before foreign visitors? We hoped it would be. In our capacity to embarrass Mr. Wilson in his Administration, lay our only hope of success. We had to keep before the country the flagrant inconsistency of the President’s position. We intended to know why, if democracy were so precious as to demand the nation’s blood and treasure for its achievement abroad, its execution at home was so undesirable. " - Stevens
President Wilson wrote, in a letter to his daughter, that suffragists "seem bent on making their cause as obnoxious as possible."
National Woman's Party members being arrested as they picket with banners before the White House East Gate, in August 1917.
In June, after 6 months of this chaos in front of the White House, the police began to make arrests, making it clear that they would continue to arrest those who blocked traffic. The enforcement was inconsistent throughout the entire year - with the police protecting the picketers one day, and arresting them on another. It was a series of blatant inconsistencies.
The punishments continued to be inconsistent as well. Some picketers were arrested, then pardoned. To confuse the issue further, the picketers would refuse the pardon - believing that they had done nothing wrong and therefore there was nothing for them to be pardoned from. One congressman attempted to push through a new bill making it illegal to picket in front of the constitution, raising the question, if it was not illegal to picket, why were the women arrested? And if the women were arrested and sent to jail, then no new law was necessary. In the end, the new law was not passed.
“In this discussion some very unfair comments have been made upon the women who picketed the White House. While I do not approve of picketing, I disapprove more strongly of the hoodlum methods pursued in suppressing the practice. I gather from the press that this is what took place. Some women did in a peaceable, and perfectly lawful manner, display suffrage banners on the public street near the White House. To stop this the police allowed the women to be mobbed, and then because the mob obstructed the street, the women were arrested and fined, while the mob went scot-free . . . .” Representative Volstead, Minnesota. (Volstead is much better known for a law he introduced in 1919 - The Volstead Act, or National Prohibition Act.)
"Tensions were running much higher by August, when the Sentinels rolled out a new banner accusing “Kaiser Wilson” of autocracy, followed by three days of attacks by an angry mob and police and the sentencing of six women to 60-day prison terms. When Paul, who had stayed off the picket line for much of that summer, returned in October, she was immediately arrested and given the longest sentence yet: seven months in Occoquan."
Decades later, in Kate's home was found "Hundreds of envelopes jammed into a kitchen cupboard contained $75 each, and were sent as payment to Heffelfinger for “taking the rap” and going to jail for another woman. ".
Earning Their Prison Pins
"The public eye will be on Occoquan for the next few weeks, to find out how these women bear up under the Spartan treatment that is in store for them. If they have deliberately sought martyrdom, as some critics have been unkind enough to suggest, they have it now. And if their campaign, in the opinion of perhaps the great majority of the public, has been misguided, admiration for their pluck will not be withheld." - Senator John Baer
Upon arriving at the Occocoquan work camp, the women were outraged to realize they would be treated as actual prisoners. "we return from the bath to receive our allotment of coarse, hideous prison clothes, the outer garments of which consist of a bulky mother-hubbard wrapper, of bluish gray ticking and a heavy apron of the same dismal stuff. It takes a dominant personality indeed to survive these clothes. The thick unbleached muslin undergarments are of designs never to be forgotten! And the thick stockings and forlorn shoes! What torture to put on shoes that are alike for each foot and made to fit just anybody who may happen along." - Stevens, Jailed For Freedom
Abby Scott Baker in prison dress
It would be amusing to read their outrage, if the conditions were not truly much more horrible than bad shoes. The bedding was washed just once a year, sheets were not always changed when new prisoners arrived, and contagious prisoners were not kept separate. The food was inadequate, and inedible. The suffragists stay in Occoquan shone a light onto the despicable treatment and practices at the work camp. The women found ways to smuggle out news, through unofficial means, and with their influence, investigations were made into the practices and procedures of the jail. There was no swift change however. And more suffragists were continually being arrested and sent to the jail. When a long time matron at the jail attempted to guide the suffragist prisoners in avoiding disease, she was fired, and given two hours to vacate the premises.
“Dr. Gannon is chief of a hospital. Yet Alice Paul and I found we had been taking baths in one of the tubs here, in which this syphilitic child, an incurable, who has his eyes bandaged all the time, is also bathed. He has been here a year. Into the room where he lives came yesterday two children to be operated on for tonsillitis. They also bathed in the same tub. The syphilitic woman has been in that room seven months. Cheerful mixing, isn’t it? The place is alive with roaches, crawling all over the walls, everywhere. I found one in my bed the other day . . . .”
Maria Moravsky, a Russian author and poet, who had herself been imprisoned in Czarist Russia and who was touring America at the time of this controversy, expressed her surprise that our suffrage prisoners should be treated as common criminals. She wrote: “I have been twice in the Russian prison; life in the solitary cell was not sweet; but I can assure you it was better than that which American women suffragists must bear.
The National Woman's Party awarded silver pins shaped like a jail cell door with a heart-shaped padlock to each of the women who had been “jailed for freedom.”
A document was created during this time, a demand that the women be treated as Political Prisoners. The document was passed from prisoner to prisoner through holes in the wall surrounding leaden pipes. It was signed by: MARY WINSOR, LUCY BRANHAM, ERNESTINE HARA, HILDA BLUMBERG, MAUD MALONE, PAULINE F. ADAMS, ELEANOR. A. CALNAN, EDITH AINGE, ANNIE ARNEIL, DOROTHY J. BARTLETT, MARGARET FOTHERINGHAM.
It read in part: "we ask the Commissioners of the District to grant us the rights due political prisoners. We ask that we no longer be segregated and confined under locks and bars in small groups, but permitted to see each other, and that Miss Lucy Burns, who is in full sympathy with this letter, be released from solitary confinement in another building and given back to us.
We ask exemption from prison work, that our legal right to consult counsel be recognized, to have food sent to us from outside, to supply ourselves with writing material for as much correspondence as we may need, to receive books, letters, newspapers, our relatives and friends.
Our united demand for political treatment has been delayed, because on entering the workhouse we found conditions so very bad that before we could ask that the suffragists be treated as political prisoners, it was necessary to make a stand for the ordinary rights of human beings for all the inmates. Although this has not been accomplished we now wish to bring the important question of the status of political prisoners to the attention of the commissioners, who, we are informed, have full authority to make what regulations they please for the :District prison and workhouse."
The Commissioners’ only answer to this was a hasty transfer of the signers and the leader, Miss Burns, to the District Jail, where they were put in solitary confinement. The women were not only refused the privileges asked but were denied some of the usual privileges allowed to ordinary criminals
On October 20th 1017, Alice Paul was arrested, along with other picketers. Two days later, at trial, when asked if the accused would make a statement, Paul said:
"We do not wish to make any plea before this court. We do not consider ourselves subject to this court, since as an unenfranchised class we have nothing to do with the making of the laws which have put us in this position.”
The women were eventually sent to Occonquon.
"At the end of two weeks of solitary confinement, without any exercise, without going outside of our cells, some of the prisoners were released, having finished their terms, but five of us were left serving seven months’ sentences, and two, one month sentences. With our number thus diminished to seven, the authorities felt able to cope with us. The doors were unlocked and we were permitted to take exercise. Rose Winslow fainted as soon as she got into the yard, and was carried back to her cell. I was too weak to move from my bed. Rose and I were taken on stretchers that night to the hospital."
The remaining prisoners embarked on a hunger strike, and were soon subjected to force feedings.
November 15th 1917
November 22 1917
Kate Heffelfinger wrote, in a note that was successfully smuggled out of the prison:
"Three times a day for fourteen days Alice Paul and Rose Winslow have been going through the terror of forcible feeding. I now know what that torture is-- the horrible gripping and gagging of swallowing six inches of stiff rubber tubing. Such a strain on the nervous system is not to be imagined. That over, there is the ordeal of waiting while liquids are poured through, then the withdrawal of the tube."
On November 19th 1917, mush weakened from the hunger strike, Kate was moved to the hospital. She, along with others, were released early, on November 27th 1917, after a court ruled that it was illegal to incarcerate the women in Virginia when they had been arrested in D.C. They were all released on bail, and by March of 1918, all of the arrests were declared unconstitutional and were stricken from their records.
"After another week spent by Miss Paul on hunger strike in the hospital, the Administration was forced to capitulate. The doors of the jail were suddenly opened, and all suffrage prisoners were released.
With extraordinary swiftness the Administration’s almost incredible policy of intimidation had collapsed. Miss Paul had been given the maximum sentence of seven months, and at the end of five weeks the Administration was forced to acknowledge defeat. They were in a most unenviable position. If she and her comrades had offended in such degree as to warrant so cruel a sentence, (with such base stupidity on their part in administering it) she most certainly deserved to be detained for the full sentence. The truth is, every idea of theirs had been subordinated to the one desire of stopping the picketing agitation. To this end they had exhausted all their weapons of force." - Stevens, Jailed For Freedom
On December 6th 1917th, at the end of the NWP mass meeting honoring the suffrage prisoners, each woman who had been "Jailed For Freedom" was presented with a special pin. The Sterling silver pin was fashioned after Sylvia Pankhurst’s “Holloway Brooch”–given to British suffragettes incarcerated in London’s Holloway Prison. Kate Heffelfinger was one of those awarded this pin.
December 19th 1917
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The Watchfire Demonstrations
The National Womens Party greeted the New Year by conducting the first of several “Watch Fire” demonstrations in front of the White House, which involved burning copies of President Woodrow Wilson’s speeches in an urn. Kate Heffelfinger was arrested and sentenced to 5 days in jail for her participation in a watchfire event.
Although President Wilson had announced his public support for a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote a year earlier (January 9, 1918), members of the National Woman’s Party did not believe he was lobbying vigorously enough for it.
On January 9th 1918, Ke was in her hometown of Shamokin, speaking of her experience in jail at a gathering in the high school Auditorium. Miss Mary Windsor of Philadelphia addressed the fathering with the topic of "Suffrage As A War Measure"
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The Demonstration At The Lafayette Memorial
In August of 1918, Kate was arrested and sentenced to 15 days incarceration for participating in a demonstration at Lafayette Square in Washington D.C.
On August 6th 1918 an open-air meeting held in Lafayette Park, Washington, D.C., with
approximately 100 suffrage demonstrators protesting Senate inaction on
suffrage bill. Forty-eight women arrested and released on bail, including
Kate Heffelfinger (Is that Kate Heffelfinger 3rd from the right holding a banner? I can't be certain, the pole blocks her face. Heffelfinger was one of those arrested for "climbing on the monument " at this demonstration.)
"Despite ALL of last year’s convictions of the “Silent Sentinel” White House pickets having been overturned on appeal in March, the authorities are still trying to stifle the National Woman’s Party’s rights of free speech and peaceful assembly. Forty-eight of the N.W.P.’s members were arrested today when they attempted to hold a suffrage rally at the Lafayette Monument in Lafayette Park, across from the White House.
The purpose of the rally was to protest the Senate’s inaction on the Susan B. Anthony (woman suffrage) Amendment, and the fact that President Wilson has not yet applied the full weight of his influence to gaining the amendment’s passage in a Senate controlled by his own Democratic Party."
June 1919
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The Prison Special Tours
Doris Stevens, Alison Turnbull Hopkins, Eunice Dana Brannan speak during "prison special" tour 1919.
Kate Heffelfinger went to Bristol, where she organized Congressional District 9. She held 5 meetings, with more than 650 in attendance.
train called the “Democracy Limited.”
Mass meetings were held around the country–from Charleston, South Carolina, to New Orleans and Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, and many other cities, ending in New York in
March.. Among the 26 speakers on this tour–often outfitted in prison dress, were veteran NWP organizers Vida Milholland, Abby Scott Baker, Lucy Branham, Lucy Burns, and Mabel Vernon as well as the elderly and courageous Mary Nolan–often touted as the NWP’s “oldest picket.” Their message was well received and they drew large audiences.
March.. Among the 26 speakers on this tour–often outfitted in prison dress, were veteran NWP organizers Vida Milholland, Abby Scott Baker, Lucy Branham, Lucy Burns, and Mabel Vernon as well as the elderly and courageous Mary Nolan–often touted as the NWP’s “oldest picket.” Their message was well received and they drew large audiences.
The “Prison Special” tour helped create a groundswell of local support for the ratification effort that began in the states a few months later, following the approval of the 19 Amendment by Congress in June 1919."
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SUFFRAGE WINS!
Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation and protest.
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Kate Heffelfinger Runs For Congress
The Miltonian, June 26, 1919
Senator McConnell failed to vote on suffrage
In 1920, Miss Heffelfinger was back in Shamokin, running for congress against McConnell, who had failed to vote on Suffrage in 1919. McConnell was also from Shamokin Pa.
According to local papers, "her two older brothers and her parents are exceedingly proud of her interest and activities in politics." Miss Heffelinger stated that her inspiration for running was Thor - her bulldog.
"This is a sad announcement for the women of Northumberland County. Just think of such a catastrophe, the very first woman to announce her candidacy should receive her inspiration from a bull pup. She says "Thor has absolute faith in me, and looks to me for everything. I just have to do something to prove worthy of such devotion and loyalty."
In an eerie premonition, the Miltonian criticized further, saying " Now this is just what the level-headed statesmen of this country most feared during all the years that women have been seeking the ballot. They feared that the idle rich, who loved only a dog, a cat, or a parrot, would be the only women who would seek office...."
As patronizing as that may sound to our modern ears, Kate would go on to hoard animals, as well as hoarding junk, in the family home, piling wrappers and old magazines around antique furniture, a suit of armor, and fine china, while sleeping on hay bales stacked by the door, with chickens running wild through the house and the oven packed full of egg shells. The Department of Health intervened at least twice, as the once stately Hefflinger property became a menace and a health hazard, overrun with stray animals.
Where the Miltonian was completely disdainful of Heffelfingers run for Senate, The Lewisburg Journal "Gossiper" was instead championing her run:
Lewisburg Journal October 22 1920
Kate received 142 votes, 108 in Northumberland, 32 in Union, and 2 in Snyder County.
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"Crazy Katie"
As she aged, and especially after the death of her mother, Kate's behavior became increasingly bizarre. A hoarder, Kate ran around town in dark clothing, collecting junk, and terrifying young children. She never slept in a bed, but rather on three bales of straw positioned to block the front door.
July 28, 1949
Inside the house, chickens roamed wild. Her house was crammed full of both junk and riches. The oven was stuffed full of egg shells, and stacks of beechnut gum wrappers, paper milk bottle caps, and cigarette wrappers filled the space. Included in her hoards were the first edition ever printed of National Geographic, and also the first edition of the Farmers Almanac. All of the piles surrounded valuable crystal, old furniture, an enormous piano, and even a suit of armor, all vestiges of her families wealth.
According to an article in the Daily Item, "Hundreds of envelopes jammed into a kitchen cupboard contained $75 each, and were sent as payment to Heffelfinger for “taking the rap” and going to jail for another woman. A big jug of Indian head pennies and other coins was found in a bedroom closet."
Bill and Bernice Shade lived next door to Kate in Shamokin. One evening, Bernice's mother came to watch their daughter while the Shades went to the movies. She was washing her granddaughters hair, when Kate began knocking on the door. The grandmother looked out the upstairs window and saw it was "Crazy Katie", and decided to ignore the woman, hoping she would just go away. Kate threw a rocking chair through the front window, shouting "He's raping his daughter!". The police were called, and Kate was taken to Danville State Hospital, where she remained for the rest of her life.
Katie Heffelfinger died on September 1, 1958 at the age of 68.
The Heffelfinger home was located at 153 Marshall Street, Shamokin Pa
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Jailed for freedom By Doris Stevens · 1920The Heffelfinger home was located at 153 Marshall Street, Shamokin Pa
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