Partner Margaret Haley

Queer Places:
Calvary Catholic Cemetery, 301 Chicago Ave, Evanston, IL 60202, United States

Catharine Goggin (1855 - January 4, 1916) was born to Irish-Catholic immigrant parents in the New York Adirondacks near Lake Champlain. As a child, she moved with her family to Chicago, where she attended the Franklin School and Central High School. In October 1872, she began her lifelong teaching career in the primary department of the Clarke School. Throughout her life, she remained single—famously claiming to have received over 300 marriage proposals without accepting any—choosing instead to dedicate her life to education and labor reform while holding the belief that a woman who teaches learns to govern rather than be governed.

Goggin began her path into public activism by utilizing her connections in Chicago society to convince Governor John Altgeld to support a crucial teachers' pension bill that successfully passed the Illinois Senate in 1895. She went on to co-found the Chicago Teachers' Federation (CTF), serving as its first president with the help of her close associate and prominent Chicago suffragist Margaret Haley, and later acting as the CTF's financial officer and Financial Secretary until her death. Together, Goggin and Haley spearheaded major battles to defend public education, teacher autonomy, and teachers' welfare, fighting passionately for equal pay for equal work. In 1899, she played a vital pivotal role in successfully leading the fight against and defeating the Harper Bill, which sought to centralize the administration of Chicago schools, increase male teacher populations and pay at the expense of female educators, impose a college education requirement, and make it generally more difficult for women to secure teaching positions, alongside granting tax-exempt long-term corporate leases on school property.

When the state faced financial insolvency and failed to pay teachers, Goggin and Haley launched a historic tax fight against the Illinois Board of Equalization. At the time, major corporations only paid taxes on tangible assets and avoided paying property taxes. Exposing the illegal under-taxation of twenty-three corporate bodies, Goggin and Haley argued that the state could fully fund teachers if these corporations paid their fair share of accumulated taxes exceeding one million dollars. They took the legal battle all the way, and in 1907, the suit ultimately won in the Supreme Court (following key legal victories starting in late 1901), ensuring corporations paid taxes commensurate with their income and profits, which directly resulted in more money for schoolteacher salaries.

Beyond educational administration and tax equity, Goggin expanded the CTF's platform to support broader progressive movements, including child labor laws and women's suffrage, such as fighting for women's right to vote. Although Haley was the more publicly active of the pair in the suffrage campaign, Goggin was heavily involved in various civic and women's groups, including the Catholic Woman's National League, where she served as recording secretary from 1897 to 1900, and the Chicago Federal Union of Labor. Her commitment to women's rights was further highlighted in 1903 when she spoke at the Annual State Suffrage Convention in Joliet, Illinois, heading a debate alongside two other women on the question of whether an educational qualification for suffrage should be applied to women. In 1914, she achieved a significant political milestone for women at the turn of the century by serving as a representative of women on the Chicago City Council's permanent charter commission.

Catharine Goggin’s life was tragically cut short on January 4, 1916, when she was struck and killed by a truck while crossing the street in Chicago. Her sudden death deepened the local movement for road and pedestrian safety, as the truck lacked a protective fender—a safety feature advocates argued could have saved her life. Following her passing, her body lay in state in City Hall amid widespread public mourning before her burial on January 8, 1916, at Calvary Cemetery in Evanston, Cook County, Illinois.

Mainstream historical accounts and biographical records document that Goggin remained single throughout her life and shared a lifelong domestic and professional partnership with Margaret Haley. However, historical sources available do not explicitly document or frame her life through modern definitions of LGBTQ identity, as personal records detailing their private romantic lives were largely unrecorded.

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