Kate Dorman

On September 8, 1863, Kate Dorman and Sarah Vosburg cooked meat, doughnuts and coffee at the hotel, and Kate drove a horse and cart to Fort Griffin with a hot meal for the gunners; some accounts say a buggy and add a gallon of whiskey. Joe Chasteen, Millie Murray and Margaret Watson left accounts. In February 1900, surviving Davis Guards Michael Carr and P. C. O'Hara came to Sabine Pass and asked for her; she had died two years before. W. T. Block and his sons later remounted her fallen gravestone and her husband's in a concrete slab.

What the plaque says

Kate Dorman (1828-1897) Georgia native Kate Dorman and her husband Arthur McGill owned the Catfish Hotel at Sabine Pass as early as 1847. McGill died in an accident in 1858, and in 1859 Kate married John Dorman. In 1862 the Catfish Hotel became a temporary hospital, and Kate nursed victims of a yellow fever epidemic. A strong supporter of the Confederacy, Kate Dorman assisted Lt. Dick Dowling's troops the day of the Battle of Sabine Pass in September 1863. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sabine Pass Battleground State Historic Site — 1.9 mi
  A waterfront park at the mouth of the Sabine where the earthwork of Fort Griffin stood, with a Dowling statue, a Union memorial, wartime magazines and a walkway for fishing.
• Sea Rim State Park — 7.4 mi
  Texas's far southeast corner: nearly two miles of Gulf shoreline backed by 4,000 acres of marsh, reached by boardwalk or paddle trail, rebuilt after Rita and Ike.
• Museum of the Gulf Coast — 11 mi
  Port Arthur's regional museum in a former bank building: fossils, Native Americans, the petroleum story, a 125-foot history mural and Halls of Fame for musicians, athletes and artists.
• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 24 mi
  A re-created oil boomtown on the Lamar University campus, with a derrick, period shops, a 1941 granite monument and an optional re-enactment of the January 1901 Lucas gusher.

More markers nearby

• Kate Dorman — steps away
• Sabine Pass Cemetery — steps away
• Jacob Harmon Garner — steps away
• Benjamin Johnson — steps away