Katherine Blount Skinner Lassiter

Katherine Blount Skinner Lassiter. 1826–1903. , In loving memory of Katherine Blount Skinner Lassiter (1826–1903) and of those who in this home lived under her Christian influence and in the shadow of old Saint Stephen’s Church during the days of the War Between the States, this house is dedicated to the development of the Christian spirit of friendliness and hospitality. , In 1849 she came from her home in Perquimans County to Oxford as the bride of Robert William Lassiter. Here she was welcomed into the loving friendship of Mrs. Robert Kyle and Mrs. Russell Kingsbury, to whose devotion the beginnings of St. Stephen’s congregation were in large part due, and whose husbands served on the committee which built the original church, consecrated April 20, 1833. Under their motherly guidance, her own active devotion to this church began and continued throughout a long and beautiful life of Christian service in this community. Near its close she had the happiness of seeing the consecration of the present church edifice on June 11, 1902, the triumphant culmination of many years of self-denial and arduous labor on the part of many saintly men and women, notable among whom with her were Mrs. Sarah Hall, Mrs. James Horner, Mrs. Melissa Hunter Gilliam and the Building Committee, sons of three of them, Robert W. Lassiter, John C. Hall, and Jerome C. Horner. , In September 1862 to afford to members of her family from the war-torn eastern counties a hospitable refuge, for which his former residence had not space, her husband bought this house, whose grounds then adjoined St. Stephen’s churchyard and embraced half of this block, and to it came with them their children, William Lassiter (later Colonel, United States Army); Benjamin Skinner Lassiter (later a minister of God in the Episcopal Church in New York, Pennsylvania and East and West Carolina, now retired after a long and faithful ministry); Robert W. Lassiter, Junior; Richard Thornton Lassiter; James Skinner Lassiter. , Among those who shared the hospitality of this home were her recently widowed mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Leich Skinner; her sister, Martha, whose husband, Captain Thomas Jones, C.S.A., had lately been killed in battle; her brother, Captain Benjamin Smith Skinner, C.S.A., wounds received in battle, and whose body was finally received here for funeral after his death in battle; her brother, Joshua Skinner, upon his release from military prison, and the widow of her first cousin; Major Tristrim Lowther Skinner, after his death in battle, and her children, Marlan Fisk Skinner, Federick Nash Skinner (later a minister of God in the Episcopal Church in East and South Carolina to his life’s end, August, 1927), Tristrim Lowther Skinner, Maria Louisa Warren Skinner (later wife of the Revd. Robert Brent Drane, D.D., now and since 1874 Rector of St. Paul’s, Edenton), Penelope Eden Skinner, and their governess, Miss Lizzie Custis. , “Her children rise up and call her blessed.” Christmas Day, 1927.