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Delmarva Diva: A.M. Foley
DelMarVa Diva
by A.M. Foley
Several divas with Delmarva connections can be found along the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A couple more ornery Delmarvans (one diva and one divo) are conspicuously excluded from stars on the Walk, surely absent by choice, not by lack of fame: Bea Arthur and Robert Mitchum.
Topping the A-list of those recognized, in most estimations, would be Katharine Hepburn. Not only is she revered as an actress, her Delmarva roots run deep. In Kent County, Hepburn family descendants maintain Shepherd’s Delight, an estate once encompassing 1,100 acres. The manor house dates to the American Revolution, family ownership to 1824.
In nearby Episcopal Christ Church I.U., Katharine’s grandfather is memorialized by a marble plaque that reads: Sewell Stavely Hepburn D.D., priest, 22 years the beloved rector of I.U. Parish. He fed them with a faithful and true heart.
Family lore tells of grandfather’s extra-pastoral duties as a young
Sewell Stavely Hepburn D.D.
circuit rider in 19th-century Maryland and Virginia. He rode horseback down rutted rural roads, tending physical as well as spiritual needs. He comforted the dying, assisted at operations, births and amputations, and once performed an appendectomy with only whiskey as anesthesia. Need be, in the vestibule after services, he took up forceps and extracted teeth.
In addition to Christ Church I.U., Rev. Hepburn pastored Kent County’s St. Paul’s Episcopal Church from 1874 to 1881 and served St. Luke’s in Church Hill, Queen Anne’s County, where he baptized granddaughter Katharine Houghton Hepburn. The “I.U.” memorializes Isaac Usilton, who gave land and financing for the original Christ Church sanctuary in the mid-1700s. St. Paul’s Parish dates to 1692, decades before the Revolution liberated the Anglican Church of England into the Episcopal Church in America.
The reverend’s son, Thomas Hepburn, chose a medical career. At Johns Hopkins, he met pioneering female medical student Ethel Houghton and her sister Kate, his future wife. The sisters’ Houghton family owned Corning Glass Company in upstate New York. Tom courted Kate in Baltimore and at his sister’s estate, Waverley, in Gloucester County, Virginia, where they sailed Mob-
jack Bay and determined to marry.
Katharine’s mother, Kate, and Aunt Edith became prominent advocates for women’s suffrage and (gasp) sex education, but both had considered theatrical careers before entering the public eye as fervent activists. On Katharine’s trip home to Connecticut with her parents, after graduating from Bryn Mawr, she announced, “I have a job, Dad. . . . I’m an actress.” Mother Kate could envision her daughter on stage in Shakespearean drama, but Dr. Tom Hepburn disapproved entirely. He had other plans for his daughter, hoping she would take up medicine.
Eventually, Dr. Tom relented. Though the tragedy was never to Katharine Hepburn and her older brother, Tom.
be discussed, his softening may have related to trauma Katharine
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