Catharine Deveney Dunham was a delegate-at-large of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, an organization founded in 1874 to promote temperance. Very little biographical information about CDD is available. Documents in this collection indicate that she was married to William Dunham, who was general agent for Union Central Life Insurance Company and, beginning in about 1913, was employed by the Detroit Life Insurance Company in Detroit, Michigan. CDD refers briefly to an early period of residence in Philadelphia; while her husband worked in Detroit, they lived in Jackson, Michigan.
CDD spoke at numerous gatherings of women's and other clubs in Michigan. She wrote her own speeches on topics assigned to her by the leadership of the WCTU. These speeches were intended to rally support for such traditional WCTU causes as Prohibition, abstinence from tobacco and narcotics, purity of sexual conduct among both men and women, and, in later years, woman's suffrage. In addition, CDD argued for reforms in the legal system that would give married women a larger share of property and child custody rights, recognize women's unpaid domestic labor, and emancipate blacks. After the outbreak of World War I, she spoke in favor of United States involvement and supported national preparedness drives.
From the guide to the Papers, 1887-1929, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)
