Catherine Ladd was born in Richmond, Virginia, where her father James Stratton had married her mother, Ann Collins, in 1807, a year after his arrival from Ireland. Six months after her birth, he fell from a vessel off the coast and was drowned.
She was educated in the schools of Richmond and is said to have been a playmate of Edgar Allan Poe.
One of her most treasured recollections of Richmond was her meeting with Lafayette at the public reception given for him there in 1824. Accompanied by her mother, she went with her husband to Charleston, S. C. , where they arrived in time to witness the jubilee for the election of Andrew Jackson.
From Charleston they went to Augusta, Ga. , where they remained until burned out in the great fire of 1829. They then returned to South Carolina but later removed to Macon, Ga. , where for three years Mrs. Ladd was principal of Vineville Academy. In 1839 she learned that a building had been erected in Winnsboro, S. C. , for a girls' school but had never been opened, and she "determined to give it a trial. " On January 1, 1840, she opened the Winnsboro Female Institute, which in 1850 had nine teachers and about a hundred students, and she remained principal until it was closed by the Civil War.
She took a keen interest in public affairs and is said to have published as early as 1851 articles on the encouragement of manufacturing in South Carolina. She is also said to have submitted a design for the first Confederate flag. As permanent president of the Ladies' Relief Association of Fairfield, she did much for the sick and wounded Confederate soldiers.
She lost everything in 1865 when her home was burned by Sherman's troops. In 1870 she reopened her boarding and day school, including among her subjects art, music, and dancing. Probably because of failing eyesight, she retired in 1880 and went to live on "Buena Vista Plantation, " nineteen miles from Winnsboro, where she spent most of her time in her garden. On July 1, 1891, she became totally blind. She died at "Buena Vista" in her ninety-first year, and although she had been a member of the Episcopal Church, she was buried in the neighboring Salem Presbyterian churchyard.
Mrs. Ladd was recognized chiefly as a writer. Her poems are characterized by religious feeling and love of nature. Her occasional letters of reminiscence and later poems, which appeared in the Winnsboro press, are signed Mrs. C. Ladd; but her earlier pen names are said to have been Minnie Mayflower, Arcturus, and Alida. Two poems of little merit, signed by her pseudonym Morna, appear in the second volume of the Southern Literary Messenger. She is said to have been a regular contributor to the Charleston News and Courier and to have published articles on art and education, as well as tales, essays, plays, and newsletters.
In September 1828 Catherine married George Williamson Livermore Ladd, born in Plymouth, N. H. , who had been a seaman ten years before; but having studied with S. F. B. Morse in Boston, he was then in the South as a portrait painter. Her son Albert Washington Ladd was wounded at the battle of Seven Pines. Her husband died on July 14, 1864.
