DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker says about Kate Dorman, down at Sabine Pass in Jefferson County. Now, some folks come to Texas and make a quiet life. Kate Dorman was not one of those folks.
This Georgia native arrived at Sabine Pass with her husband, Arthur Magill, and by 1847 the two of them were already owning and operating the Catfish Hotel right there on the pass. That's not a bad start to a Texas story. But Texas, as Texas tends to do, was just getting warmed up.
In 1859, Arthur Magill was killed in an accident. Kate was left a widow with two young daughters and a hotel to run — and she kept running it. The following year she married John Dorman, and life pressed on.
Then 1862 rolled around, and yellow fever came to Sabine Pass the way bad news tends to arrive — uninvited and in force. The Catfish Hotel became a temporary hospital, and Kate Dorman became its nurse, tending the victims of that epidemic under her own roof. She had already shown she could carry weight most people wouldn't pick up.
But the marker saves its best for last. In 1863, the Battle of Sabine Pass. Kate was a strong supporter of the Confederacy, and when Lieutenant Dick Dowling's troops needed food, she didn't send word — she moved.
Through enemy fire. She traveled through it to bring provisions to those men, and that is not a line that gets softer the more times you say it. Georgia native.
Hotel keeper. Nurse. And a woman who rode through a firefight with a meal.
The pass remembers.
What the marker says
Georgia native Kate Dorman and her husband, Arthur Magill, owned and operated the catfish Hotel at Sabine Pass as early as 1847. Arthur Magill was killed in an accident in 1859, and the following year Kate, a widow with two young daughters, married John Dorman. In 1862 the Catfish Hotel became a temporary hospital, where Kate nursed victims of a yellow fever epidemic. A strong supporter of the Confederacy, Kate traveled through enemy fire to provide food to Lt. Dick Dowling's troops during the Battle of Sabine Pass in 1863. (1990)