Bernard Baruch was an American financier and statesman. He advised several U.S. Presidents. He built his fortune on Wall Street. Mr. Baruch was born in 1870 and died in 1965. He came to the Stratford Raymond T. Goldbach VFW post in November of 1951 at the request of the Women’s Auxiliary of the VFW, to answer questions about the economy, the national debt, and politics.
Mr. Baruch’s first school teacher in New York City was a women with deep and strong Stratford ties. Her name was Katherine Devereux Blake. Katherine was the daughter of Lillie Devereux Blake, whose one time “Elm Cottage” still stands on Main Street today. Lillie Devereux Blake was one of the pioneers of the National Women’s Equal Suffrage Association, and would have become its President, but she was narrowly defeated by Susan B. Anthony.
Katherine was also the great-great-great granddaughter of William Samuel Johnson. The home known as the William Samuel Johnson home on the corner of Main Street and West Broad Street was a place Katherine knew well, and had spent much time in as a child. Katherine’s family spent summers in Stratford to “escape the dangerous miasmas and heat” of her family’s plantation home in North Carolina.
Katherine’s obituary in The New York Times February 3, 1950 read: Miss Katherine Devereux Blake, veteran woman fighter for liberal causes, who taught school in this city for fifty-one years, died yesterday at the home of a niece, Mrs. Williams McKim Marriott, in St. Louis…Her age was 92. Miss Blake was the first teacher in New York of Bernard Baruch. On the occasion of her eighty-ninth birthday on July 10, 1946, Mr. Baruch sent her a message expressing his “affectionate good wishes.” “She was my first teacher when I came to New York over sixty-five years ago,” he said. “I feel deeply grateful to her for the encouragement and inspiration she gave me as a small boy, and indeed through all the succeeding years.” … Katherine Devereux Blake was for thirty-four years principal of P. S. 6 here, which was named after her mother. She was one of the organizers of the first women’s evening high school here, and lectured widely on education; woman’s suffrage, and the peace movement…She was long active in the work of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
Following almost immediately upon the heels of Katherine Blake’s death, we can’t help but suppose that one of the unarticulated reasons for Mr. Baruch’s visit to Stratford was to pay posthumous tribute to his long ago teacher at her gravesite in Union Cemetery. Lillie Devereux Blake’s (Katherine’s mother) gravesite is nearby Katherine’s.
In an earlier tribute to Katherine Blake, Mr. Baruch said, “Miss Blake was a wonderful woman. She had a great influence over me all my life. Teachers never know where their influence on conscience and character will end. I have felt a lifelong debt to my first teacher. She got me to work hard. When I was promoted, she gave me a prize.” The prize that Mr. Baruch was given by Ms. Blake was a book containing Charles Dickens Great Expectations and Oliver Twist bound together in one volume.
Even though Katherine never taught in Stratford, her own values would have been shaped by the time she spent in town. Stratford has been blessed with a number of female instructors who have influenced the conscience and character of Stratford’s children for generations. A few come immediately to mind: Ruby Wheeler, Gladys Jubb, Helen King Reynolds, Mary Hardy, Claribel Spamer, Imelda Goyette, and many more.
