Mrs. W.R. Brown's wedding took place at the Magoffin Home. Kate Moore Brown was a spectacular woman with a big impact on El Paso. She was born on December 17, 1871 and moved to the city of El Paso at the age of 14. Her father was very ill when she was young, so she and her family decided to move to an area that was sunny and warm: El Paso. Brown was the first ever female to graduate from high school in El Paso. She graduated at age 16. As a matter of fact, there were only two graduates that year that met the expectations of going to college. The two graduates were her and 20 year old George Prentiss Robinson. Brown revolutionized the face of art and music history in El Paso, being the first ever art teacher in El Paso. She was also part of many music groups and choirs, which showed she had a great passion for music. She and her husband, William R. Brown, shared many interests that particularly consisted of music and the arts. Unfortunately, Brown died in 1945, only a few years after her husband.
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The fourth bicyclist is taking the photograph! Mrs. W.R. Brown may be on the left. The location is unknown. Teaching and performing kept Kate busy, and she proved herself a modern woman. She belonged to the Jolly Girl Bachelors, who gave dances and played cards to amuse themselves. At times she taught at two or three schools at the same time and so she accomplished another first: owning and riding in public the newfangled contraption called a bicycle from school to school, something unheard of even in the frontier west. Heretofore, only men had been seen cycling down El Paso’s few streets. Riding her bike on the dirt roads and through the sand, Moore rode as far as 600 Montana, the site of Mesa School (later Bailey), according to Mary Cunningham in her history of the El Paso Woman’s Club. Despite the fact that Kate wore the long dresses of the time, high shoes and leggings, the town’s gossips were “dreadfully shocked,” according to a 1936 El Paso Herald-Post
First To Graduate From El Paso's Only High School-1887
Image caption: Kate Moore was one of two members of the first graduating class of El Paso, Texas only high school in 1887. (Photo courtesy of the El Paso County Historical Society)
So it was that Kate Moore enrolled at El Paso’s first high school and in 1887 at age 16, became the first female to graduate from El Paso's first high school in 1887, one of two students to complete requirements that year, the other being George Prentiss Robinson, 20, the son of a Fort Bliss paymaster. It was one of many firsts as Kate Moore defied the norms of this West Texas town as well as those in the rest of the country in her growth as an active, independent woman. Only a year later, Kate’s father moved the family to San Diego, Calif., where Kate enrolled in a local high school and received a second diploma in 1889. That year her father died and Kate moved back to El Paso in 1890.
Francis Marion Moore, Kate’s father, began to suffer from rheumatism beginning in the early 1870s, and he decided to move the family to warm, sunny El Paso when Kate was 14. Skilled in playing the piano and in vocal music, she entered the newly created high school, a part of the first public educational institution, Central School, located at Campbell Street and Mrytle Avenue. Kate Moore would not only make her mark in becoming one of the first two graduates of the high school, but she would greatly influence the city’s musical development and cultural growth.
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