Katie
Littie Daffan
(1874–1951)
Katie
Litty (Miss Katie) Daffan, author, teacher,
journalist, and clubwoman,
was born on July 29, 1874, in Brenham, Texas,
daughter of Laurence A.
and Mollie (Day) Daffan. She attended public
schools in Denison and
Corsicana, graduated from Hollins Institute in
Virginia, and was a
special history student at the universities of
Texas and Chicago. She
taught elementary school in Ennis and San
Augustine and high school
history in Houston, served as principal of a
girls' school in Dallas,
and taught summer sessions in the normal
schools of East Texas. She was
elected first vice president of the Texas State
Teachers Association and was named to the
State Text-Book Board by Governor T. M. Campbell. When she was named
superintendent of the Confederate Woman's
Home
in Austin in 1911, she became the first woman
in Texas appointed to
head a state institution; she remained
superintendent until her
resignation in 1918.
The Sunday Gazetteer
Sunday, September 26, 1897
Miss Katie was literary editor for the
Houston Chronicle from 1921 to 1928
and feature columnist for the Ennis Daily
News from 1936 to 1950. She also wrote
or edited New Orleans (1906), Woman
in History (1908), My Father as I
Remember Him (1908), The Woman on
Pine Springs Road (1910), As
Thinketh a Woman (poems, 1911), Texas
Hero Stories (1912), History of the
United States (1924), and Texas
Heroes (1924), which was adopted as a
textbook for third, fourth, and fifth grade
students in Texas.
She served five terms as president of
the Texas Division of the United Daughters of
the Confederacy,
was third vice president general of the UDC,
and was a life member of
its executive board. In addition, she served
as president of the Texas
Woman's Press Association (1908–09), state
historian of the Daughters of the American Revolution (1909–10), state
secretary to the General Federation of Women's
Clubs (1909), and first vice president of the
Texas State
Historical Association (1912, 1913, 1914);
she was a member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, a charter member of
Houston Pen Women, a board member of the Houston Public Library (1904–29) and of the
Houston Board of Recreation (1922–29), and
first president of the Houston Storyteller's
Club (1922–29).
Miss
Katie was twice appointed sponsor for Texas to
the General Confederate
reunions and in May 1913 was appointed sponsor
for the South to the
General Confederate Reunion held in
Chattanooga, Tennessee-the highest
social honor conferred upon a woman of the
South. The Katie Daffan
Chapter of the United Daughters of the
Confederacy at Denton was named
in her honor. She was also secretary for life
of Hood's Texas Brigade, in which her father
had served.
Although
reared a Baptist, she was converted to
Catholicism in 1938. Throughout
her life she was an ardent Democrat and in her
last writing still spoke
strongly in favor of states' rights and the
"Brave Cause of the South."
She was married briefly in 1897 to Mann Trice,
then assistant attorney
general for the state of Texas. They had no
children. Katie Daffan died
in Ennis on May 22, 1951, after being hit by a
car near her home.
Andrea Ivie Webb
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Virginia Duff,
"In Memory of Miss Katie Daffan," Texas House
of Representatives Journal (52d leg.,
reg. sess., 1951). Who's Who in America,
1946.
Katie Litty
Daffan: Ellis Co. Blog
Dead
Confederates, a Civil War Era Blog: Cousin
Katie's Platform
Texas Woman's
University: Katie Daffan Collection
Biography
Index
Susan Hawkins
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