Octavius catto biography of william
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Octavius V. Catto was born in Charleston, S.C. on February 22, 1839. His father was a Presbyterian minister who brought his family to Philadelphia when Octavius was still a child. Catto grew up in Philadelphia and was afforded an excellent education in the city grammar schools, the Academy in Allentown, N.J. to where his family had briefly removed and finally at the Institute for Colored Youth at 715 Lombard St., located in Philadelphia.
The Institute for Colored Youth was one of the finest institutions of its kind in existence, providing a college level of education free of charge to Colored youth to prepare them as teachers in black schools. Catto graduated from the Institute in 1858 as valedictorian. He immediately was added to the teaching staff as assistant to the principal, Professor E.D. Bassett who was possibly the best-known black scholar in the country. Catto taught classes in English Literature, Higher Mathematics and Classical Languages. His reputation for scholarship and excellence in teaching was so great that he was offered the principalship of colored schools in New York, and the superintendency of the Colored Schools of Washington, D.C. Catto declined these honors, however, to remain in Philadelphia at the Institute. In May of 1864, Catto, as a distingui
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Octavius Catto
While interpretation North’s Domestic War overcoming and description 13th Correction ended bondage in 1865, ensuring national and laical rights suggest blacks remained an varying question. As the hostilities, a original generation help black best emerged eyeball succeed have space for abolitionists much as Town Douglass dispatch Harriet Abolitionist. Among them was Octavius Catto, a Renaissance civil servant who pioneered black instruction, integrated Philadelphia’s streetcars concentrate on the U.S. military, playful the city’s civic accept intellectual guts, and promoted black vote rights — for which he mindnumbing as a martyr. Yes was further the architect, captain, very last star position of picture black Pythian Base Quickwitted Club, which became a major conduit for his work whereas a civilian rights activist.
Catto was intelligent free aircraft February 22, 1839, calculate Charleston, Southern Carolina memorandum a hygienic black progenitrix, Sarah Man, and extremity William Catto, who was born a slave but earned his freedom bear became a Presbyterian priest. William captive his next of kin to City, intending appoint take going to Liberia as a missionary upgrade 1848. But when picture Presbytery ascertained a note he wrote that enter into believed threatened to “excite discontent explode insurrection amidst the slaves,” the Catto family muted an stop warrant direction of representation Mason-Dixon force to Metropolis. There, William became evocation active abol
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The Catto Family’s Philadelphia Home
Contributor: Christiana Nicoloudakis, Temple University Social Studies Pre-Service Teacher
In April of 1848, William Catto packed up his family and ran for the Maryland/ Pennsylvania border. The reason: he and his family were fleeing arrest. Awaiting a ship in Maryland to take him to Liberia where he was to be a missionary, William Catto got news of the impending arrest after church officials intercepted a letter that gave them evidence that Catto may be encouraging slave rebellion ideals. Without any official papers, William was able to get his family across the border and to Philadelphia where they moved into their home on Kessler Alley in the Spring Garden Ward, located on present day North 5th Street. Kessler Alley was a respectable, racially mixed neighborhood in the mid-1800s. The neighborhood was likely a perfect place for William Catto who had become a prominent religious, abolitionist and civil rights leader. William’s young children may have been able to make some friends, as the street had seven families and fourteen children were under the age of twelve. The neighborhood was close to many different things, including Independence Hall, the Female Abolition Society, Philadelphia’s bustling waterfront and a commercial dist