To celebrate our 150th Anniversary, we are introducing a monthly "Celebrating 150 Years" feature highlighting a unique historical person or story from different decades in the district's history. Watch for new stories and decades each month throughout the school year!
by Brian Cole
Kate McLellan Finkle was a Moorhead teacher, business woman, political candidate and civic advocate in our community between 1880 and 1901. Her daughter, Kate Talbot Finkle, would graduate from Moorhead High School in 1901 and go on to become a leading suffragist in the Twin Cities between 1905 and 1918.
Kate McLellan was born in Canada in 1847 and immigrated to the United State in 1875. She was a teacher in Minneapolis during the later part of the 1870s and took up a claim near Elbow Lake, Minnesota. As a single lady, this was an unprecedented feat at the time. McLellan was an acquaintance of W.H. Locke who was the principal of the Moorhead Schools from 1878-1880. Locke convinced her to come to Moorhead and McLellan began teaching in Moorhead in 1880.
Later in life the elder Kate recalled that Moorhead was bare and depressing in the winter but that she soon became interested in the students of the community. She recounted the story of having to half thaw out frost-bitten feet and frozen ears of students before school work could begin. McLellan formed many new friendships and returned to teach for several years although during the summer months she returned to Minneapolis and stayed with friends.
During a fundraising drive to purchase books for the Moorhead schools in 1882, McLellan was encouraged to ask local businessman, Henry Finkle, for a donation. It was recorded that Finkle gave $25 to the project. That donation may well have been the start of their courtship as Henry and Kate were married in March of 1883. Due to a long-standing policy that would last into the 1950s, women were not allowed to teach once they were married and so the elder Kate resigned her teaching position in the Moorhead Schools. Henry and Kate gave birth to a daughter, Kate Talbot Finkle, in January of 1884.
The Finkles sold two parcels of land (near today’s Hjemkomst) to the Moorhead school board which would be the location of Moorhead’s first ward school from 1884-1965. Henry Finkle passed away from a tooth infection in February of 1891. Years later, the younger Kate sadly reminisced how the entire community mourned the loss of her father who was one of Moorhead’s earliest business owners and most respected pioneer citizens.
Following the death of her husband, Kate became much more involved in the civic life of Moorhead. She served as a judge for oratorical contests, ran for the Moorhead School Board, served on several temperance committees, and even was a candidate to become the superintendent of the Clay County Country Schools.
The younger Kate excelled as a student in the Moorhead schools. According to attendance records and grade books from the era, Kate found success as a writer. Several of her articles were entered in the Minneapolis Journal Newspaper contest. On two different occasions Kate’s articles won the top prize. One of the prizes was a framed photo that hung in classrooms of the Moorhead Schools from 1899 to 1967. (The photo, pictured above, was rediscovered behind an old filing cabinet in the Moorhead bus garage in February of 2017.)
Kate graduated from MHS in 1901 and then enrolled at the University of Minnesota where she was involved in the Glee Club, the Women’s League and the Minne Ha Ha Literary Society. After her graduation from the University of Minnesota in 1905, Kate became a leader in the Minnesota Women’s Suffrage Association, worked as a probation officer for the Hennepin County Juvenile Court and was an active volunteer for the Minneapolis Women’s Rotary Club. When famed suffragists Emmeline and Sylvia Pankhurst visited the Twin Cities in 1911, it was Kate Finkle who was interviewed and then quoted in the Minneapolis Tribune, “The Pankhurst women have made suffrage a serious issue all the world over.”
Kate married Henry Brandeis Wehle on June 4, 1918. Wehle was the nephew of United States Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1916-1939). Kate and Henry made their home in New York City as Henry was a curator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. According to their passport records, Kate and Henry traveled the world together securing objects for one of the world’s great art museums.
Kate passed away in 1977 and is buried in the artists cemetery in Woodstock, New York.
Information for this article was taken from: the Moorhead Daily News, the Minnesota Historical Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, the University of Minnesota Archives and the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County.