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A Woman of the Century:   A Crowdsourcing Project of the Nineteenth and Twenty-First Centuries

February 4 - February 10

Woman of the Week

Author and poet Kate Slaughter McKinney is this week's Women of the Week.   

  •  To learn about her by viewing her items, please click on her image.  

  • To read her biographical sketch in A Woman of the Century, please click on the highlighted page numbers to the left of her image.

Kate Slaughter McKinney.jpg

MCKINNEY, Mrs. Kate Slaughter

February 6, 1857

author and poet

London, KY

p.488

Author and poet Kate Slaughter McKinney was born in London, Kentucky, on February 6, 1857.  By 1870, her family lived in Kirksville, Kentucky.  Interested in writing from an early age, she published her first work at fifteen in the Louisville Courier-Journal.  Kate graduated from Daughters' College in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, in 1876.

On May 6, 1878, Kate married James I. McKinney.  In 1880, the couple lived in Richmond, Kentucky.  The McKinneys made their home in Mount Vernon, Illinois, in the late 1880s. She published a book of poetry, Katydid's Poems, in 1887.

In the early 1890s, Kate and James moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where they lived for many years.  She continued to publish into the twentieth century.

Kate passed away in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 2, 1939.