Stebbins, Catherine Louisa, 1900-2000 : Catherine Louisa Stebbins, daughter of the Rev. Charles E. and S. Helen Stebbins was born February 23, 1900 in Syracuse, New York. When she was a year and a half old, her parents moved to Illinois, where her father served in several churches. She received her primary and secondary education in Illinois. She began serious study of the piano at an early age and continued through college. During her teens, she performed extensively in concerts and musicals and thaught piano. While in high school she studied under the head of the Piano Department of Rockford College for Women in Rockford, Illinois, she entered Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio from which she received a B.A. degree with a major in music, and minors in French and English. For two years after her graduation, she devoted herself to music, playing in concerts and on the radio, and doing much accompanying with artists.
Some years later, she turned to a business career and for a number of years held secretarial positions in Chicago with investment houses and Kiwanis International. Following the death of her parents, she returned to Oberlin College, where she served as executive secretary of Students Loans. However, after several years in that position she decided to move to northern Michigan, where since her childhood, her family had a summer home at Congregational Summer Assembly on Crystal Lake, and she continued her secretarial work in Traverse City and Interlochen fo some time.
She finaly abandoned business to became historical researcher and writer. She specialized in colonial period of New England and New France, and she devoted the rest of her life to intensive, in-depth research and writing of this period. She discovered primary records that threw fresh light on number of subjects. Miss Stebbins major writings are "Massacre at Deerfield" and a biography of "Jacques Denoyon" a very important French Canadian explorer. She also is the author of "Here I Shall Finish my Voyage, The Marquette Death Site", "History of Site of Father Marquette's Death at the Betsie River" The Marquette Death Site: Frankfort vs. Ludington", "Marquette: his Second Voyage and Last Day", "Pere Jacques Marquette's Chalice" and "Missilimakinak and Mission Saint-Ignace". As official Historian/Archivist of the Congregational Summer Assembly, she also collected, mounted and captioned a very large and impressive pictorial history of the organization. Catherine Louisa Stebbins died at The Maples, in Frankfort, Michigan, November 24, 2000.
