July 12, 1884 - October 30, 1965

by C. Rudolph Knight, Saint Augustine’s College Chapel, Raleigh, 2012

On November 3, 1965, St. Luke’s Colored Protestant Episcopal Church in Tarboro held the Requiem Mass and Burial Office for Catharine Cornelia Perry Weston, daughter of an Episcopal priest, wife of an Episcopal priest, mother of an Episcopal priest, and great aunt of an Episcopal priest. Catharine’s long and faithful journey began in 1884, two years after her parents, the Rev. Dr. John William Perry and Mary Eliza Pettipher Perry, came to serve at St. Luke’s and to start the Parochial Day School, which served the Tarboro community for seventy years (1882 – 1954).

The Rev. John Perry, who spent his entire ministry at St. Luke’s, was one of the first graduates from the Theology Department at Saint Augustine’s School in Raleigh. Mrs. Perry was another early graduate, and her mother, Mrs. Pettipher, was a matron in the college’s early years. Catharine was privately tutored and trained at St. Luke’s Day School, then matriculated at Saint Augustine’s for high school, normal school, and college. She was thoroughly trained in the liberal arts and domestic sciences offered at the college and excelled in mathematics and music.

Catharine took seriously her role as daughter, wife, and mother of Episcopal clergymen. She was active in many Church programs, serving as organist and choir director, superintendent of the Sunday School, and, at times, head of the Women’s Auxiliary. In 1925 she was one of the representatives from the diocesan Woman’s Auxiliary to the national Triennial Meeting in New Orleans.

Catharine taught 63 years, most in Tarboro and vicinity, with nine being in Savannah, Georgia. Her career began in the parochial day school founded by her father and continued in the parish day school of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Savannah, which was then headed by her husband, the Rev. Milton Moran Weston, Sr. The couple was married June 16, 1908, in Tarboro at St. Luke’s. When her husband succeeded her father as vicar of St. Luke’s she returned to the Perry School (as the day school was known locally), and later taught public school. After her retirement as a teacher of mathematics and Latin at Tarboro’s W. A. Pattillo High School, she taught in Rocky Mount, Pinetops, and Halifax County. After her final retirement from the public schools, she continued her teaching career in her home until March of 1965 when she suffered a stroke. The school in her home was an original “Head Start” program for preschool children, and she also coached individual high school students. In addition to her teaching career in the classroom, Mrs. Weston taught piano in her home for 60 years – right up to her final illness.

Her vision for the children she taught and for the community where she lived was often far ahead of accepted expectations. She lived long enough to see some of her hopes fulfilled in the great social changes of the last century. Most of all she specialized in stimulating young people to greater achievement and a high sense of their personal dignity and duty.