katie l. ramsey
1915-2015
Life Story
Early Life in Mississippi
Katie L. Ramsey was born on September 5, 1915, in Ellisville, Jones County, Mississippi, the daughter of Lennie Howze, later known as Lennie Hawkins. Katie’s surname at birth and the identity of her biological father have not yet been established.
By 1920, Katie appeared in the federal census as Kate Wheaton, living with her mother, who was also enumerated under the Wheaton surname. While this establishes that Katie was using the surname Wheaton by 1920, it does not establish that Wheaton was her surname at birth or identify her biological father. Although family-tree information has suggested a connection to Chester Wheaton, no primary record has yet been located establishing whether Chester was Katie’s biological father, stepfather, or held some other relationship to the family.
Katie was the eldest of a large group of children associated with her mother’s family. Her siblings and half-siblings included Flora Mae, Francis, Eloise, Alfred, Elbert, Hunter, Vielene, and Annetta. Through her mother’s changing households, Katie became part of a family whose roots extended across both Jones and Newton Counties in Mississippi.
Katie attended Opark High School and completed her education through the eighth grade.
Marriage to West Ramsey
As a young woman, Katie married West Ramsey. By 1940, the couple was living together on Second Avenue in Laurel, Mississippi.
Their marriage began a partnership that would eventually carry Katie far beyond the Mississippi communities in which she had grown up.
At the beginning of the 1940s, Katie and West were still living in the segregated South. Within a short time, however, they would leave Mississippi and establish a new home hundreds of miles away.
From Mississippi to Erie
In 1941, Katie and West Ramsey left Mississippi and settled in Erie, Pennsylvania. Their move occurred during the larger period of the Great Migration, when millions of African Americans left the South for cities in the North, Midwest, and West.
While Katie and West’s move fits within that larger historical movement, the surviving information does not establish their personal reasons for choosing Erie. What the records do show is that Pennsylvania became the center of Katie’s adult life.
Over the following decades, she was associated with residences on West 11th Street and East 23rd Street in Erie. What began as a move away from Mississippi in 1941 became a permanent relocation, and Katie would spend more than seven decades connected to the Erie community.
Thirty-Five Years at St. Vincent Hospital
Katie established a long working career in Erie.
She was employed in the housekeeping department at St. Vincent Hospital, where she worked for approximately thirty-five years.
Her decades at the hospital became an important part of her adult life. The length of her employment reflects a substantial working career that paralleled the years in which she and West established and raised their family in Pennsylvania.
After growing up in Mississippi and moving north as a young woman, Katie had built both a home and a working life in Erie.
Family and the Things She Loved
Katie and West Ramsey raised two children:
- Mary Brenda Ramsey Vactor, of Erie, Pennsylvania
- Patrick Ramsey, of California
Katie’s family circle extended beyond her two children. Later accounts also identified Patricia Stovall, Lisa Collins, and Jackie Jordan as her three “special daughters,” preserving relationships that were important enough to be acknowledged alongside her immediate family.
She also maintained connections to the large family into which she had been born in Mississippi. Among her surviving siblings was her sister Vielene Haynes of Gary, Indiana.
Away from work, Katie enjoyed gardening and baking. She was remembered for the homemade cakes and pies she prepared and for enjoying shopping trips with her daughter.
These details preserve a more personal side of Katie’s life than can be recovered from census schedules and residential records alone. They tell us something about the woman her family knew rather than simply where she lived or worked.
One Hundred Years of Life
In September 2015, Katie reached an extraordinary milestone when she celebrated her 100th birthday.
Her century of life stretched across enormous changes in both American and African American history. Born in Mississippi in 1915, Katie had lived through the era of Jim Crow segregation, the Great Depression, World War II, the Great Migration, the Civil Rights Movement, and the social transformations of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Her own family’s geography changed as well. The family that had once been concentrated in Mississippi eventually extended to places such as Pennsylvania, Indiana, and California.
Just three weeks after reaching her centennial birthday, Katie Ramsey died on Saturday, September 26, 2015, in Pennsylvania.
She was laid to rest beside her husband, West Ramsey, at Lakeside Cemetery in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Legacy
Katie L. Ramsey’s one hundred years form a remarkable bridge between generations.
She was born in Jones County, Mississippi, in 1915 to Lennie Howze. By 1920, the historical record identifies the young girl as Kate Wheaton, although the evidence currently available does not tell us whether Wheaton was her birth surname or establish the identity of her biological father.
That uncertainty is itself part of responsible family history. Rather than assigning Katie a father simply because she carried a particular surname as a child, her story should preserve the distinction between what the records document and what remains to be discovered.
What becomes much clearer as Katie reaches adulthood is the story she created for herself.
She married West Ramsey, left Mississippi with him in 1941, and established a new life in Erie during the era of the Great Migration. She raised a family, worked for approximately thirty-five years at St. Vincent Hospital, tended her garden, baked the cakes and pies for which she was remembered, and developed relationships with people who became family whether connected to her by blood or affection.
Most remarkably, Katie lived long enough to celebrate one hundred years of life.
From a childhood divided between the Howze, Wheaton, and later Thomas family households of Mississippi to more than seven decades in Erie, Katie L. Ramsey’s life connected the rural South of the early twentieth century with generations of descendants whose lives extended far beyond Mississippi.
Her paternal ancestry remains a question for future research. Her own legacy does not. It survives in the family she raised, the relationships she nurtured, the decades she worked, and the century of history through which she lived.
Resting Place
Lakeside Cemetery in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Photos/Albums
Sources
- 1920 U.S. Census, Newton County, Mississippi, population schedule, Beat 4, Linnie Wheaton household. Katie was enumerated as Kate Wheaton, approximately four years old, living with her mother, Linnie Wheaton. This record establishes Katie’s use of the Wheaton surname by 1920 but does not establish that Wheaton was her surname at birth or identify her biological father.
- 1930 U.S. Census, Newton County, Mississippi, population schedule, Beat 4, Hunter Thomas household. Katie was enumerated in the household of her mother, Lennie, and Hunter Thomas, along with other children in the family. The record documents the Thomas household during Katie’s youth but should not be used by itself to establish the biological parentage of the children.
- 1940 U.S. Census, Jones County, Mississippi, population schedule, Laurel, West Ramsey household, Second Avenue. The census documents Katie’s marriage to West Ramsey, their residence in Laurel, and information concerning Katie’s education.
- Obituary for Katie L. Ramsey, Erie, Pennsylvania, September 2015. The obituary records Katie’s birth on September 5, 1915, in Ellisville, Mississippi, her education at Opark High School, her move to Erie in 1941, and her longtime employment in the housekeeping department of St. Vincent Hospital, where she worked for thirty-five years.
- Ibid. Katie’s obituary identifies her children as Mary Brenda Ramsey Vactor of Erie and Patrick Ramsey of California and names Patricia Stovall, Lisa Collins, and Jackie Jordan as her “special daughters.” It also identifies her surviving sister, Vielene Haynes of Gary, Indiana.
- Ibid. The obituary remembers Katie as an avid gardener and baker, particularly known for her homemade cakes and pies, and records her enjoyment of shopping with her daughter.
- Ibid. Katie celebrated her 100th birthday in September 2015 and died on Saturday, September 26, 2015, approximately three weeks after reaching that milestone. Lakeside Cemetery, Erie, Erie County, Pennsylvania, burial record for Katie L. Ramsey. Katie was buried at Lakeside Cemetery alongside her husband, West Ramsey.
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