Author: Williams, Catharine M.
Biography:
WILLIAMS, Catharine R., formerly ARNOLD (1787-1872: ANBO)
Her first name is given with the spelling "Catherine" in some sources, but "Catharine" (which is on her marriage record) is more usual. The daughter of a sea captain, Alfred Arnold, and his wife Amey Read, she was born in Providence RI. Her mother died when she was still a child and she was raised by two aunts in a religious household which she left at the age of 23, after the death of one aunt and the marriage of the other. In 1824 she married Horatio N. Williams in New York City but left him after two years and returned to Providence, taking their daughter Amey with her. After obtaining a divorce she worked as a schoolteacher and began her writing career, starting with Original Poems, which she published by subscription in 1828, but going on with prose fiction, history, and biography. Her most successful titles were Fall River (1833) and The Neutral French; or, The Exiles of Nova Scotia (1841). Income from her writing coupled with a legacy enabled her to stop publishing in 1845 but she wrote an autobiography, which remains in MS but which was used by Sidney S. Rider in Bibliographical Memoirs of Three Rhode Island Authors (1880). She died in Providence. (ANBO 10 Feb. 2021; ancestry.com 10 Feb. 2021; findmypast.com 10 Feb. 2021) HJ