Tiffany, Kathrine Belanger, 1879-1978

Kathrine Belanger Tiffany was born in 1878 in Neillsville, Wisconsin to Ferdinand Belanger and Margery Johnston Belanger. The family moved to North Dakota and purchased a quarter section in Morgan Township, Traill County in 1884. Kathrine received a bachelor's in English in 1902 and a master's in English in 1908, both from the University of North Dakota. Kathrine married Neil Carnot Macdonald, superintendent of Lidgerwood schools in 1904. Macdonald served as North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction from 1916 to 1918. The Macdonalds left North Dakota in 1921 for the Pacific northwest where Neil had accepted a deanship at Seattle Pacific College and where Kathrine taught English. Neil Macdonald died unexpectedly in 1923 of uremic poisoning. Kathrine accepted a position teaching rhetoric at Whitworth College in Spokane, where she met her second husband, Orrin E. Tiffany, who was Dean at Whitworth. In 1933, Orrin became Professor of History and later Chairman of the Division of Social Sciences at Wheaton College, IL. Katherine also taught at Wheaton for eighteen years. Orrin Tiffany died in 1950. Even after leaving North Dakota, Kathrine maintained a very close relationship with and interest in the University of North Dakota. Kathrine encouraged her nephew, Chester Fritz, to establish the Chester Fritz Scholarships, the Chester Fritz Professorships, and to provide one million dollars for the building of the Chester Fritz Library dedicated in 1961 and another million dollars for the Chester Fritz Auditorium, which opened in 1972. She received UND's highest alumni award, the Sioux Award, in 1964. Kathrine B. Tiffany died April 18,1978 at the Presbyterian Retirement Home in Quarryville, Pennsylvania.