Those Kitchin Girls

Yearbook photos are a great way to capture details of your ancestors.  I’ve been going through a number of the North Carolina yearbooks that have been added to the Internet Archive and sometimes I am particularly struck by a photo.

This weekend, while going through the yearbooks for Meredith College , I noticed that there were three girls, all from Halifax County, by the name of Kitchin.  I was struck by the photo of one in particular before I even looked at the name – that of Musette Kitchin.  Then, in the next couple of volumes for the college I found two more Kitchin girls.  I wondered who they were?

These photos of the ladies are from the 1928, 1929, and 1930 yearbooks for Meredith College (then called Baptist Female University).  Musette was a daughter of former Governor William Walton Kitchin.  Hesta & Pauline were sisters, her first cousins; their father was William Walton’s brother, Claude Kitchin Sr.

In the process of researching them to reconstruct the tree and see how they were related, I learned that Hesta & Pauline’s mother is related to one of my family’s slaveowners – Kemp Plummer Battle (former president of UNC-Chapel Hill).  Their mother Kate Mills Kitchin is a great- granddaughter of Catherine Ann Battle Wesley who was a sister to Kemp’s father, William Horn Battle.   These types of connections are interesting to come across.

Yearbooks can help add great detail to your family tree.  I wonder if Pauline’s family knows about her garnering the superlative for “Most Poised” ?  You’ll find these yearbooks linked from the Education page.