Katharine Nugent Armstrong: An Introduction

Katharine Nugent Armstrong was the oldest child of Baker White Armstrong, Sr., and Mary Ophelia Nugent Armstrong (Sr.). Her siblings were Mary Ophelia Nugent Armstrong (Jr.), Baker White Armstrong, Jr., and Helen Frances Armstrong. Of the four children, only Katharine and Baker married, and only Katharine had offspring. (Baker's wife had two children from a previous marriage.) The descendents of Baker White Armstrong, Sr., then, include four children, three grandchildren, two great-grandchildren (my husband and his sister) and five great-great-grandchildren. The family tree sort of bottlenecked there for a generation or so.

We have many of Katharine's letters, her Wedding and Anniversary album, as well as numerous photographs. But this post will just introduce the oldest child of the man who left Virginia and lived a prosperous life in Houston, Texas. The family was well known and respected in Houston and in Boulder, Colorado, where they had a summer home. Katharine and her siblings had all the advantages of an upper-middle-class family: social connections, good educations, family wealth. Katherine and her sister Mary ("Mimi") participated in recitals that were recorded in local newspapers. Both could play the piano, and Katharine was also known for her poetry, which she recited at public events. (See a sample of her poetry in the newspaper. Click on the image to read the poems and on the photographs to view larger images.) That the girls enjoyed full social lives is supported by the many playbills, tourist souvenirs, and individually kept photo albums and scrap books among the family papers.

The children of Baker White Armstrong, Sr., were also mentored by their aunts. At various times, Baker's unmarried sisters lived with them or near them, as well as one or two of his wife's maiden sisters.  Mary's sister Helen Nugent, after whom her daughter Helen ("Hydie") Frances Armstrong was named, left behind several personal journals and a few letters; this maiden aunt lived with the Armstrongs in Houston, moving there some years after the Nugent family home, "Longwood," burned in Salem, Virginia, and after which the family (Perry Nugent, Sr., and his family) suffered serious financial difficulties. Katharine was surrounded by this extended family and must have felt sympathy for the privations of her elderly relatives. Her own father's prosperity, while providing her and her siblings with material goods, was no barrier to sorrow and loss.

Katharine Armstrong Nugent (later married Samuel Thomas "Sam Tom" Robb): born May 5, 1894, in Houston, Texas; died November 14, 1964, in Houston, Texas.