Sarah Worthington, Sarah Worthington King

Female

May 10, 1800

February 6, 1877

Chillicothe, OH

Cincinnati, OH
Cambridge, MA
Philadelphia, PA

William Peter (1844)
Edward King (1816)

Sarah was the daughter of General Thomas Worthington, a senator from Ohio. She was educated at private schools in Kentucky and Washington, D.C. She married Edward King at the age of 16. The couple would go on to have five children. In 1831, they moved from Chillicothe to Cincinnati. Upon the death of Edward, Sarah moved to Cambridge, MA to be near two of her children who were attending Harvard. She later married William Peter, who served as the British consul to Philadelphia. In 1848, she opened a school for women that would later become Moore College of Art & Design. Her second husband died in 1853 and she returned to Cincinnati where she began traveling to Europe and collecting art for the Ladies Academy of Fine Arts. On one such trip, she converted to Roman Catholicism.

"She was a woman of remarkable mental power, highly cultured and well informed. In her death, the Catholic Church loses one of its most earnest, zealous and conscientious members. But in her memory it gains a treasure which cannot be taken away."
Cincinnati Daily Gazette February 7, 1877, page 4, Cincinnati, Ohio.

"She has founded in Philadelphia and Cincinnati not less than 20 convents, and beatowed the bulk of her wealth upon charitable institutions. She crossed the ocean nine times on special visits to the Pope, and has traveled the world over."
New York Tribune February 8, 1877; Volume: XXXVI; Issue: 11190; Page 4; New York, New York .

Cincinnati Daily Gazette February 7, 1877, page 4, Cincinnati, Ohio.
"Sarah Worthington", Ohio History Central, July 1, 2005,
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=302