Catharine Van Valkenburg Waite

Catharine Van Valkenburg Waite (30 January 1829, Dumfries, Ontario, Canada – 9 November 1913, Chicago, Illinois) was an American writer, lawyer, businesswoman, and women's suffrage activist.

Biography Born in British North America, Van Valkenburg moved with her family to Denmark, Iowa Territory at age 17.

She moved to Illinois in 1850 to study at Knox College. After transferring to Oberlin College in 1852, she tutored students in elocution and helped found a literary society.

In 1874, she began a decade of editing the Crusader, a temperance paper.

She enrolled in the Union College of Law, the joint law department of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, in 1885 at the age of 56. In 1886, she founded the Chicago Law Times, a quarterly magazine which she edited. At the International Council of Women at Washington, she was elected president of the Woman's International Bar Association, 26 March 1888.

Along with a number of other Chicago women leaders, Waite was involved in the planning of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.

Waite lived in Colorado during her later years, continuing to write and practice law. She died of heart disease of 9 November 1913 while visiting her daughter Lucy's home in Park Ridge, Illinois. Her cremated remains were interred at Chicago's Graceland Cemetery.