DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker at Sabine Pass tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, some folks pass through a place and leave hardly a trace. Kate Dorman was not that kind of folks.
Born in Georgia in 1828, she made her way to Sabine Pass and, along with her husband Arthur McGill, was running the Catfish Hotel there as early as 1847. Think about that — the Catfish Hotel, right there at the Pass, and Kate was at the center of it. Then 1858 came, and Arthur McGill died in an accident.
A hard blow by any measure. But the following year, 1859, Kate married John Dorman, and she carried on. The hotel kept its name.
Kate kept her footing. Then the war arrived at everybody's doorstep. In 1862, the Catfish Hotel stopped being a place where a traveler could rest his boots and became something far more somber — a temporary hospital.
Yellow fever had come to Sabine Pass, and Kate Dorman was right there nursing its victims. Not beside the story, not watching from a distance — in the thick of it. Now here is where the telling picks up speed.
September 1863. The Battle of Sabine Pass is coming, and Kate Dorman, a strong supporter of the Confederacy, assisted Lieutenant Dick Dowling's troops the day of that battle. The day of it.
Whatever those men needed, Kate was there providing it, right on the edge of one of the more remarkable engagements of the whole war. She lived until 1897, which means she carried every one of those memories — the hotel, the epidemic, the battle at the Pass — for a good long while. The marker remembers her now, but you get the sense she wouldn't have thought of any of it as remarkable.
Just what needed doing.
What the marker says
(1828-1897) Georgia native Kate Dorman and her husband Arthur McGill owned the Catfish Hotel at Sabine Pass as early as 1847. McGill died in an accident in 1858, and in 1859 Kate married John Dorman. In 1862 the Catfish Hotel became a temporary hospital, and Kate nursed victims of a yellow fever epidemic. A strong supporter of the Confederacy, Kate Dorman assisted Lt. Dick Dowling's troops the day of the Battle of Sabine Pass in September 1863. (1997)