Katherine Roewe Mather

Katherine Roewe Mather, our grandmother, was 33 years of age when the 19th Amendment became the law of the land. While Carrie Chapman Catt toiled to ensure its passage and to secure the rights of women, Katie Mather was toiling on an Iowa farm raising a family of five children and making her contribution in other ways. She was an independent and strong woman, modest and hard-working.

She instilled these same values in her daughters. Like other women of her time, she helped build her community into the prosperous place that we know today. Katie Mather was born on August 20, 1887. She grew up on the Roewe farm in Pocahontas County, Iowa, attending a one-room school in Swan Lake Township and graduating from Laurens High School in 1905. She went to Normal School in Cedar Falls and taught school for several years in a country schoolhouse. She married Ray Mather in 1913, worked on the farm, reared her children and later helped as her husband established a farm implement dealership in Laurens.

Her world revolved around family and community. In later years she delighted her grandchildren with dinners of roast beef and mashed potatoes and the best cinnamon rolls ever produced from an oven. Her patience and kindness knew no limits. She lived to be 97 years old. Grandma Mather exemplifies the best of the hearty Iowa women of her generation.

We honor her for her contributions to our family and our state.

7/1/96