Peggy Derrick
Catalog Number: 1984.064.01
Katherine Martindale’s Shoes
Sometimes the artifacts we feature in this series are more interesting than the people who used or made them—or, at least, we know so little about the person involved that we can only focus on the artifact.
But we know a lot about the wearer of these shoes, and she was a complicated human being with a touching story and deep roots in La Crosse. Katherine Martindale was born in La Crosse in 1890, in the beautifully preserved yellow Martindale House at the corner of Cass and 10th Streets. One of 3 siblings, she was born to comfort and status, and like others in her social class at the time was educated out east, training to be a teacher.
But Katherine only taught a short time before being called home to care for her widowed mother and settle her father’s estate. Although engaged at one time, she never married. Instead, she became the child who stayed at home, taking care of an elderly parent, and holding onto the family house and social prestige as best she could. In the days before Social Security and Medicare, these “maiden aunts,” or (more unkindly) “old maids,” played an important role in families and society.
Both of Katherine’s siblings, Henrietta and Stephen V, had more adventurous lives, but with many struggles and complications from mental illness. They discovered upon their father’s death that they were not as well off as they had thought, and there was friction between them over money. Katherine had to learn the insurance business very quickly and worked to hold onto the family home, which was of utmost importance to her. She died in La Crosse in 1976, the last Martindale to live in the house.
Special Collections of Murphy Library, at UW-L, has a collection of Martindale family letters, and Teri Holferd, a librarian there, has put together a website with biographies and photos of the Martindale children. You can see them at https://teriholford.wixsite.com/martindalesisters.
These shoes date to the 1920s, and while Katherine would have been too much a proper lady to embrace the flapper “lifestyle,” she was certainly fashionable, and these pumps would have been the perfect accessory to a drop-waist 1920s dress.
One curious thing about these shoes: they are a size 10 AAA. Katherine must have had long, narrow feet!
This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on January 18, 2020.
This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.
