Presentation Transcript: That I May Be Useful To My Dear People – Emma Curry-Stodder
First of all, I’m Larry Smith from the Alabama chapter, and I am honored to introduce our guest speaker. She conducted research for her doctoral dissertation a few years ago in Guntersville—where I live—on the Brown family, one of the most nationally recognized Cherokee families.
Emma was like a breath of fresh air after dealing with all of us older folks over the years. She is wise beyond her years, considering her educational background. She holds a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, a Master of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge in the UK, and most recently, a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania.
For those unfamiliar, Penn may not be known for its football team, but it’s certainly known for its academics. Her dissertation is 400 pages long—oh my goodness—which she’ll tell us more about.
She has presented at national conferences, received numerous awards, and though she’s highly educated and speaks five languages, she’s one of the kindest, most approachable people I’ve ever met.
Please welcome Dr. Emma Curry!
Dr. Emma Curry (Presentation):
Wow, what an introduction! Thank you. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I speak five languages—but I’m familiar, yeah. That was a generous intro; I hope I can live up to it.
Okay, I’ll go ahead and start my presentation and try to leave about 10 minutes at the end for questions.
Title of Dissertation and Presentation:
“That I May Become Useful to My Dear People: Katherine Brown, the Brown Family, and Cherokee Christianity in the Era of Removal.”
On March 8, 1820, Katherine Brown closed a letter to Isabella Hall with a heartfelt exhortation that they both remain faithful to the Lord and do much good in the world. She added a touching postscript:
“Oh, how much I want to see my little Jenna and hear her talk. Dear sister, give her a sweet kiss for her Aunt C. I hope the Lord will make her a good missionary.”
After Katherine’s death, missionaries appropriated and edited her letters, producing a posthumous memoir. While they preserved her expressions of faith, they struck the final postscript—one that spoke volumes about kinship. A Cherokee woman referring to herself as an aunt to a white missionary child challenges simple interpretations of “Christian sisterhood” and introduces a powerful cross-cultural kinship dynamic.
Katherine Brown was born around 1800 near the foot of Lookout Mountain, in the town of Creek Path—modern-day Guntersville, Alabama. She became the most famous Cherokee convert associated with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM).
Initially, she sought education from the missionaries at Brainerd Mission. Persuaded by their teachings, she converted and joined the “mission family,” a community structured to model Anglo-American patriarchal family life, but which, ironically, operated in a manner resembling traditional Cherokee town life with communal arrangements.
Katherine navigated the cultural upheavals of conversion by employing a distinctly Cherokee idiom of kinship. She wrote letters to benefactors, missionaries, and her brother David, addressing each as “sister” or “brother.” These letters were widely published, elevating her to celebrity status during the Second Great Awakening.
Cherokee society was matrilineal. Clans descended through the mother, and women—especially mothers and sisters—held powerful roles domestically and diplomatically. The most famous example is Nancy Ward, the “Beloved Woman” of Chota, who spoke as a mother to both Cherokee men and white treaty commissioners.
In a petition to the Cherokee National Council in 1817, Nancy Ward and other women wrote:
“We have raised all of you on the land which we now have… Your mothers, your sisters ask and beg of you not to part with any more of our land.”
This rhetoric—blending maternal authority with sisterly appeal—demonstrated both power and vulnerability. Katherine Brown similarly invoked Christian sisterhood, blending it with Cherokee kinship in her letters. She encouraged white correspondents to embrace her as a sister in Christ, tapping into contemporary Anglo-American women’s religious identities and roles.
Katherine’s letters struck a chord with white readers. One contributor to the Religious Intelligencer wrote:
“I put it into the hands of a person who was a stranger to religion. He returned it with eyes filled with tears…”
Katherine’s identity as a fair-skinned, English-named Cherokee woman created fascination. Some observers remarked she could pass for white. One missionary visitor noted:
“No one—even a Cherokee—would suspect but that she was one of the mission sisters from the North.”
When it became known she was “part white,” many white readers suddenly found her conversion and intellect more believable. Her “partial whiteness” rendered her an acceptable member of the national Christian family.
Despite the success of her memoir—which sold over 2,500 copies in six months—Katherine was deeply uncomfortable with her celebrity and especially with the unauthorized publication of her letters.
In one unpublished letter, she wrote:
“I thank you that you do not put it in print, for I do not think my letters fit to go before the public…”
Nonetheless, her writings were used to build the myth of the “civilized Indian.” Editors removed or softened language about hell, warfare, and familial tension to present her as a model convert—docile, humble, and pure.
Katherine’s entire family—parents, siblings, and extended kin—eventually converted. Letters between them show a similar blending of Christian and Cherokee kinship language. For instance, her parents, John and Sarah Brown, wrote to David:
“The missionaries call us father and mother, and we are glad to have them call us so.”
However, behind these conversions were painful decisions. Some family members had already relocated to Arkansas. Others debated whether to remain or emigrate—an agonizing decision tied to U.S. removal policy.
Katherine remained unmarried, which was seen as virtuous by white admirers. Her identity as a spinster “aunt” aligned with both Cherokee matrilineal kinship and white ideals of modesty and virtue. After her death, her niece—also named Katherine Brown—survived the Trail of Tears as a child and lived until 1902.
In her obituary, she too was lovingly called “Aunt Katherine” by the Cherokee community. The title came full circle, representing continuity between the generations.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Katherine Brown was repeatedly romanticized as a “little forest maid,” “noble savage,” or “Indian princess.” Often, her story was twisted to uphold paternalistic and assimilationist narratives. Writers speculated she died from “too much studying”—suggesting Native women weren’t suited for intellectual life.
Yet in Oklahoma, the Cherokee honored her differently. The Katherine Brown Missionary Society in Tahlequah actively served the community for decades—celebrating her pride, strength, and legacy not as a docile convert, but as a resilient leader.
Katherine Brown’s life illuminates the contradictions of race, religion, gender, and national belonging in the early republic. Though she was embraced by many white Christians as a symbolic “sister,” her own kinship network—Cherokee, matrilineal, complex—was largely erased from that narrative.
We must remember Katherine not in isolation, but as part of a broader Cherokee story. Her legacy demands that we consider who truly belongs in our national family—and who gets to decide.
Presentation Transcript: That I May Be Useful To My Dear People – Emma Curry-Stodder Larry Smith (Introduction): First of all, I’m Larry Smith from the Alabama chapter, and I am honored to introduce our guest speaker. She conducted research for her doctoral dissertation a few years ago in Guntersville—where I
