William sprague

Salmon p chase
Kate the chaser
Katherine Jane Chase Sprague was a Washington society hostess during the American Civil War. During the war, she married Rhode Island Governor William Sprague.

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Kate Chase - "Queen" of Washington

First Lady?

Kate Chase was the favorite daughter of Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, and one of the leading socialites of Civil War-era Washington. During the Civil War, Kate's father maintained strong ambitions to become president, despite the fact that he was the Treasury Secretary in Lincoln's cabinet - the man he hoped to defeat in the Election of 1864. Kate strongly supported her father's ambitions. Because her father had never remarried after the death of his wife, Kate would have become first lady had her father been successful.

Washington's Most Dazzling Socialite

Kate Chase was a celebrity in Washington. She set fashion trends, dazzled the city's elite and wealthy, and threw legendary parties and receptions that would become the talk of the town and which prompted jealousy in First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. Certainly, an invitation to one of Kate's parties was a coveted ticket in Washington during the Civil War. Everything Kate did, however, was calculated to support her father's political career. Her 1863 marriage

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Notable Visitors: Kate Chase Sprague (1840-1899)

Daughter of Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, Kate Chase Sprague married Rhode Island Senator William Sprague during the Civil War. She was beautiful, charming, precocious, a leading social figure in Washington at 19, and a top political aide to her father until his death.

Salmon P. Chase had little luck building a family. Three wives died and four of their six children died as well. Kate Chase, the oldest surviving daughter, was spoiled and ambitious. She had been packed off to boarding school at age 9 because she didn’t get along with her stepmother. At 21, she set out to be the First Lady of Washington in fact if not name. She had no intention of acquiring another stepmother — despite her father’s interest in women such as Adele Cutts Douglas, the widow of Senator Stephen Douglas. Lincoln writer Jerrold M. Packard wrote: ”Aside from his vanity and his intellect, the treasury secretary’s chief possession was his daughter Kate. Probably Chase’s strangest peculiarity was that he ran just about neck and neck with his

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Washington Hostess During the Civil War

Kate Chase was the daughter of Salmon P. Chase, Treasury Secretary under President Abraham Lincoln and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Despite her youth, Kate was the reigning social queen of Washington, DC during the Civil War and a strong supporter of her widowed father’s presidential ambitions that would have made her First Lady.

Katherine Jane Chase was born August 13, 1840, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of famous Ohio politician Salmon P. Chase and his second wife Eliza Ann Smith, who died shortly after Kate’s fifth birthday. Kate is best known as a society hostess during the American Civil War, and a strong supporter of her father’s political ambitions.

Kate Chase was educated at the Haines School in New York City, where she learned languages, elocution and the social graces along with music and history. Kate witnessed her father’s political rise in Ohio, where he established a reputation as an antislavery lawyer. At sixteen, Kate decided that her father should be President of the United States