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Katherine “Kate” Patterson was the second wife of William Shotliff. She was born in Tyrone, Ireland, on May 6, 1867. She emigrated with her parents to America in 1872. Their first stop was Chicago where her father found employment as a baker. In 1875 they came to McHenry County and Harvard, Richmond, Solon Mills and finally Spring Grove in 1884.
When she married William Shotliff in 1885, who we learned last week was a widower with one child, she was 18 and he was 35. Together they had three sons and two daughters.
William died suddenly in 1900 and she remarried in 1904 to John W. Sanborn. John had six children from a previous marriage, and they had one child together, a boy named John B. Sanborn.
John W. died in 1920 and in 1921 Kate married one more time to Byron L. Orvis. When they were young, Byron and Kate were schoolmates and friends. Her father was a baker in Solon Mills and when he went around the county selling his wares, Byron and Kate secretly ate cookies and pies in his bakery together. Kate would often take the blame - and the punishment - for the missing pastries. Byron had two children from his first wife’s first marriage that he was raising after her death.
Now, John W. Sanborn was Byron’s uncle...so in essence, Byron married his aunt and became the stepfather of his seven cousins!
If you were counting, Kate and Byron had 15 children now, and they were all with them when they went to the Chicago City Hall to get married. After 25 years with Byron, for the first time Kate did not outlive her spouse when she passed away in 1946.
Described as a loving woman with “great generosities toward everyone” she was laid to rest with William Shotliff and his first wife, Mattie Stevens in Cole Cemetery.
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