Katharyne Hill (left) and classmates at the Campbell School for Girls, 1904. | WHS collections 1965.25.1. Gift of Vesta Spencer Taylor.
We have previously shared the story of Edward Hill, who was born enslaved, traveled to Windsor after the Civil War, and built a life that included working, worshipping, and residing in the heart of Windsor alongside many of the leading families in town. Among Edward Hill’s many achievements was raising a foster daughter, Katharyne.
Katharyne appears in the Windsor census of 1900 as a 13-year-old. At that point, Edward and his wife Sallie had been married for 12 years. Much like we were unable to identify the exact link that brought Edward to Windsor, we also don’t know exactly how Katharyne came to be raised by the Hills.
We do know that Katharyne was born on September 5, 1890 in Massachusetts. Her birth parents were Anthony McQuade and Mary Wood, both age 20. Anthony was an Irish immigrant, and Mary was mixed African and Native American. Unfortunately, Anthony died earlier in 1890, and Mary died in childbirth, leaving behind four children: Katharyne, a brother Charles, and two older sisters, Cecilia and Emma.
According to family lore, the McQuades and the Hills were neighbors. However we haven’t found documentation showing when and where they met or how they knew each other. Because her birth parents died when she was so young, Katharyne may have arrived in Windsor as an infant. Whatever the connection between the two families, Katharyne resided with Edward and Sallie until 1912, except for a few years when she attended college and worked out of state.
In Windsor, Katharyne was educated at the Campbell School for Girls, formerly known as Hayden Hall and the Young Ladies’ Institute. Originally founded by Judge H. Sidney Hayden, this school employed Edward Hill as a janitor for more than 20 years. Windsor Historical Society’s archives include a photograph taken in 1904, that shows Katharyne as a young teenager in a group of 19 students and teachers in front of the school. Unsurprisingly, Katharyne is the lone Black person.
The Society also possesses a photograph of Windsor Cannery workers, which appears to date from the early 1900s, perhaps a few years after the Campbell School photograph. (The cannery was established in 1894 to process fruits and vegetables grown in the community; Judge Hayden was an investor and officer of the company.) Of the 27 people pictured, one appears to be Katharyne; again, she is the only Black individual.
Windsor Cannery workers. (colorized). Possibly Katharyne Hill sitting 7th from left. | WHS collections 1993.77.1. Gift of Robert T. Silliman.
Upon completing her studies at the Campbell School, Katharyne attended Fisk University (a historically Black college/university) in Nashville, Tennessee, graduating in 1906 with a degree in teaching. She returned to Windsor and then left again to teach public school for several years, including, for a time, in Baltimore. In 1912 she married Dr. William B. Jones, who was the first Black dentist to practice in Springfield, Massachusetts. The couple settled in Springfield and had four children: William, Jr., born in 1913; Zora, born in 1916; Kathryne, born in 1919; and Yvonne, born in 1925.
After her marriage and well into the 1930s, Katharyne was a homemaker, as would be expected at that time for a middle-class married woman with children. However, the census record of 1940 begins to reveal a new story.
A Burst of Activity and Activism
For a period of at least six years beginning around 1936, Katharyne lived in New York City, where she worked as a social worker in the Department of Welfare. During this time, she also studied at Columbia University and the New York School of Social Research. (She was accompanied in New York by her daughter Katharyne, who attended Columbia University.)
By 1942, Katharyne returned o Massachusetts and became notably active in civic affairs, as seen in numerous articles in Springfield’s Daily Republican and Morning Union newspapers. That summer, she became the treasurer of the newly formed College Heights Civic Association, which aimed to head off racial discrimination in several housing projects under construction. That year, she also helped oversee a YWCA summer program of recreation and World War II service work for high school students. In 1943, Katharyne represented the “YWCA, Negro group” at the Western Massachusetts Conference on Legislation in Wartime, where she served on a panel on social welfare. Early the following year, as chair of the Springfield Committee to Abolish Poll Taxes, Katharyne traveled to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress.
For two years during the early 1940s, Katharyne served as the director of social services at Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee. In 1944 she led an effort to investigate charges of mistreatment and discrimination against Black troops stationed at the base: “… the group of citizens headed by Mrs. Jones demanded an adjutant general’s investigation as the only adequate means of exposing Jim Crowism at the field” (Daily Republican, February 21, 1944). The group’s work included appealing directly to the adjutant-general of the U.S. Army. (Unfortunately, we could not determine the outcome of this investigation.)
Katharyne Jones (far right) with the College Heights Civic Association leadership, July 29, 1942. Courtesy of The Springfield Daily Republican.
Over the next several years, Katharyne worked on issues related to migration from the South and the return of veterans after World War II ended. She helped guide the development of Springfield’s Strickland Community Center (1944), cochaired a recreation committee to help Jamaican workers in temporary housing (1945), and after the war’s end, was interviewed on the radio to discuss how Springfield’s Fair Employment Practices Committee, which she had previously chaired, could help new veterans (1946).
During the 1950s, Katharyne remained extremely active in Springfield and was appointed to multiple local and state boards and committees on a variety of topics. She served on the Springfield Human Relations Commission and the Mayor’s Rent Control Board. She was president of the Sharon Neighborhood House, Inc. She was a state and local officer for the Catholic Interracial Council, a member of the state Committee for the Aged, and a participant in a national Conference for the Aged.
The Words of Katharyne Hill Jones
Because Katharyne’s activities were covered extensively in Springfield’s newspapers, we have a direct view into some of her thoughts regarding civil rights activism. Her words clearly lay out the beliefs that gave rise to her actions—from directly fighting discrimination in the Army to offering hands-on support to new Springfield residents from the South.
On August 29, 1944 the Morning Union described her as “an outstanding exponent of elimination of racial prejudice.” She is then quoted as saying,
“There is a lot of racial prejudice here in Springfield. … It’s the same old story of the under privileged. White people don’t like to have Negroes advanced over them because they feel that it is threatening their security. If they could be educated along with the Negro so that they will not look on him as an enemy, much of the racial prejudice will disappear.”
Ten years later, Katharyne was described in an article on integration in the same newspaper as “a social worker who has labored arduously to improve the plight of the Negroes, who live in the substandard housing.” She was quoted in that article as saying,
“Many Negroes in the lowest cultural level have come to Springfield in recent years from the South and although their living conditions appear unbelievably bad, they frequently are better than what the newcomers left behind. We must create a desire within them to create a proper household. We’ve got to begin from the ground up. Many Negroes are not aware of the resources available to them, and must be helped through a long-range educational program.”
A Family Dedicated to Community and Service
In 1970, Katharyne died at the age of 80, and her husband William Jones died the following year. A graduate of Shaw University, University of Pennsylvania School of Dentistry, and Harvard University Graduate School, William also served his community as president of the National Dental and Medical Association from 1925–27, as a charter member of the NAACP, as a grand master Mason, and as a trustee of the Massachusetts Dental Association and of Springfield’s Third Baptist Church.
The example set by Katharyne and William of community involvement, career dedication, and service to others appears to have been an inspiration to each of their children, as documented in Springfield newspapers over many years.
William Jones Jr. also became a dentist and practiced in Springfield for 46 years. He was a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army during World War II and attended Lincoln University, Springfield College, and Howard University School of Dentistry. He became the president of the Springfield NAACP and of the board of the Springfield Urban League, and a member of the Springfield Police Commission, Rotary Club, American Legion, and Boston Guardsmen. William Jr. died in 2002.
Zora Jones worked as a medical secretary at the University of Massachusetts; her 1989 obituary succinctly states that she was “active in local political and civic activities.”
Daughter Katharyne Jones Irvis was a women’s tennis champion in Springfield, became the national Negro college women’s tennis champion in 1939 and 1942, and in 1946 was the American Tennis Association’s women’s champion (two years later, Althea Gibson began a ten-year streak as champion in this Black tennis organization). She attended Columbia University and Prairieview College in Texas and lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she taught physical education, for fifteen years before her early death from pneumonia in 1959.
Like her father and brother, Yvonne Jones became a dentist. She graduated from Smith College and the University of Pennsylvania’s Evans Dental Institute and opened her practice in 1952. She was the first Black woman admitted to Evans Dental Institute and the first Black woman inducted into the national dental honor society, Omicron Kappa Upsilon. Yvonne was an avid golfer who repeatedly chaired the annual tournament run by the Home City Golf Association, a pioneering Black golf club. Yvonne served on Springfield’s Medical Advisory Council, volunteered as a foster grandparent for the city’s Urban League, and was a tutor at the Westover Job Corps Center. She died in 2014.
A Voice and a Force for Equality, Fairness, and Civil Rights
Katharyne McQuade Hill Jones’ obituary in the Morning Union, October 28, 1970. Courtesy of The Republican.
In Katharyne Hill Jones’ obituary, the mayor of Springfield said of Katharyne’s service on the city’s Human Relations Commission, “[She] was a marvelous member for so many years and the city has suffered a tremendous loss.” In all, Katharyne’s decades of advocacy work were centered around civil rights: fighting racial discrimination, advocating for access to adequate housing, opposing poll taxes, arguing against de facto segregation, and working to create and sustain effective integrated communities.
The miles between Windsor and Springfield are not nearly as great as the distance traveled by Edward Hill from an enslaved life in North Carolina to a free life in Windsor. But in making her own journey back to Massachusetts as a young woman, Katharyne Jones surely carried with her the influence of her foster parents, Edward and Sallie Hill. The echoes of her unique upbringing in Windsor resounded as she went on to dedicate herself to improving equality, fairness, and civic engagement in Springfield.
We cannot know today how the experience of growing up as one of the few Black persons living among the white community leaders of Windsor—of worshipping and working with them, of studying side by side with their daughters—shaped Katharyne’s life. But we can read her words and witness her actions, and what these tell us is that decades after leaving Windsor, Katharyne clearly believed in the power of racial integration to improve lives and communities.
Further, she married this belief with the understanding that change of this scale doesn’t simply happen—it must be accompanied by educating all involved, by supporting those who need it, and by making her voice heard, time and time again.
By Sarah Gilligan, WHS board member and volunteer, 2025
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