Louise Fontaine Cadot Catterall (20 November 1899–11 November 1986), preservationist, was born in Richmond and was the daughter of Clarence Percival Cadot and Louise (originally Louisa) Fontaine Meade Cadot. Descended from prominent early Virginia families, including the Beverleys, Meades, and Randolphs, she was a privileged young girl who enjoyed the benefits that her situation provided. After attending Virginia Randolph Ellett's school (later Saint Catherine's School) in Richmond, she continued her education at Bryn Mawr College. She majored in history, politics, and economics and graduated cum laude with an A.B. in 1921. The first woman in her family to attend college, she later said that she and the other graduates of Ellett's school were considered "unheard-of freaks" for selecting Bryn Mawr, but Ellett had established a relationship with the college and encouraged her best students to apply there. The well-known reformer and suffragist Lila Hardaway Meade Valentine, who was Louise Cadot's aunt, also encouraged her and offered to help finance her education.
Cadot went to New York City after graduation and received a certificate of completion from the Katherine Gibbs School of Secretarial and Executive Training in 1922. On 4 November of that year, in Richmond, she married Ralph Tunnicliff Catterall, a Chicago native and New York attorney. They moved to Richmond in 1924, where he joined a respected law firm and later became a judge of the State Corporation Commission. They had no children, and he died on 8 October 1978.
Louise Catterall was executive secretary of the Richmond League of Women Voters from 1925 to 1928 and editor of its News Bulletin from at least 1927 to 1930. She did research for the Medical Society of Virginia from 1928 to 1934 and was a secretary for the Richmond Academy of Medicine from 1934 to 1936, when she began her long association with the Valentine Museum (later The Valentine). Catterall started as a volunteer librarian and became secretary to the board and also curator of prints and manuscripts. The collections grew under her care, as did her knowledge of Richmond history, which local historians regarded as encyclopedic. She gained a reputation as exacting and outspoken but was also generous in sharing her knowledge and detailed files with researchers and professional historians. Catterall's publication of Valentine Museum material included an introduction to the exhibition catalog Richmond Portraits in an Exhibition of Makers of Richmond, 1737–1860 (1949), Virginia's Capitol Square: Its Buildings and Its Monuments, with Mary Wingfield Scott (1957), Illustrated Guide to Richmond, the Confederate Capital, with Eleanor Sampson Brockenbrough (1960), and Conrad Wise Chapman, 1842–1910: An Exhibition of His Works in the Valentine Museum (1962).
Catterall's interest in historic preservation probably developed from witnessing the decline of her childhood neighborhood in downtown Richmond. She and other like-minded women, along with local members of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, led the fight to preserve Richmond's architectural variety from being replaced. They were especially concerned about the historic Church Hill neighborhood, and in 1957 they formed the Historic Richmond Foundation. As one of the founding members, Catterall helped persuade the city to designate Church Hill and other areas as historic districts. She and her husband led one of the attempts in the 1960s to preserve the Gilded Age city hall and to save their former church, Monumental Episcopal Church. Through the Historic Richmond Foundation, Catterall arranged the purchase of other endangered properties in order to restore them. Her commitment of time, money, and knowledge stimulated interest in the adaptive reuse of buildings of architectural distinction and influenced the evolving appearance of Virginia's capital. In recognition of her work, the Virginia Historical Society named her an honorary member in 1978. Despite Catterall's success in saving a number of important buildings, she could not stop urban redevelopment and believed that her preservation efforts had largely failed.
Louise Fontaine Cadot Catterall died at her home in Richmond on 11 November 1986 and was buried in the city's Hollywood Cemetery.
Sources Consulted:
Who's Who of American Women (1958), 1:225; birth date in Meade family Bible records (1860–1909), Acc. 37997, Library of Virginia (LVA); Marriage Register, Richmond City, Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, LVA; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 5 Nov. 1922; Mrs. Ralph T. Catterall Papers, The Valentine, Richmond; some Catterall letters in correspondence archives and minute books, both Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC), Richmond; other publications include Catterall, "Books Printed in Richmond: An Exhibition," Commonwealth 7 (Apr. 1940): 17–18, "Old Houses Reflect Richmond's Story," Commonwealth 8 (Dec. 1941): 13–14, 20, "Valentine Museum: An Educational Force in Richmond and Virginia," Commonwealth 9 (Nov. 1942): 11–13, 23, ed., "Tabb-Hubard Letters," Virginia Museum of History and Biography 56 (1948): 57–65, and "Reflections on an 81st Birthday," Richmond Quarterly 6 (fall 1983): 46–49 (quotation on 46); Richmond News Leader, 31 May 1963; Valentine Museum Bulletin (Sept. 1963), including cover portrait; information provided by Anne Hobson Freeman (2002); obituaries in Richmond News Leader, 13 Nov. 1986, and Richmond Times-Dispatch, 14 Nov. 1986; memorial resolutions in VMHC Minute Book, 19 Nov. 1986, VMHC, and Historic Richmond Foundation News (winter 1987), 11.
Photograph courtesy of Historic Richmond.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Frances S. Pollard.
How to cite this page:
Frances S. Pollard, "Louise Fontaine Cadot Catterall (1899–1986)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2006 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Catterall_Louise_F, accessed [today's date]).
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