Katharine Butler Hathaway was born in New York City on January 28, 1774. She was the only daughter of Thomas Francis Kenneally, a wealthy Irish landowner, and Anne, the daughter of John Butler, a member of the Irish House of Lords. From her early youth she developed a passion for reading and writing. At age twenty-one she married Samuel F.B
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Morse, who later became famous as the inventor of the first practical telegraph. The couple had one son, Francis Ormonde Morse who died at twenty-nine. Katharine returned to her first love—writing—and published her first book A History of the Lives and Voyages of the Captains Iberville and La Salle in 1814.
Her second book The American Quarterly Review was published in 1816. Through her pen she continued to inspire women to seek higher education and to become involved in their communities through public speaking engagements and book clubs. Her most famous work is Woman's Worth, or Woman's Lectures Delivered to the Ladies of New York (1835).