Katharine Hepburn and the Eastern Shore

Connecticut can lay claim to actress Katharine Hepburn, but her roots are firmly in Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

In the late 1600s, James Hepburn Jr. (1640-1709), son of the 4^th Earl of Bothwell, emigrated from Scotland to Shrewsbury Parish in Kent County. The family decided to stay in Kent County, even building a house on land called Shepherd’s Delight in c. 1767. Sewell Stavely Hepburn, Sr. (1845-1932), James’s 4th great-grandson, graduated from Washington College in 1864. He went on to minister at the I.U. Christ Church. This Episcopal church was petitioned in 1766, located in Worton, between St. Paul’s and Shrewsbury, and it continues to serve the residents of Kent County to this day. His son Sewell, Jr. (1874-1921), became a physician who retired to Annapolis. Sewell, Jr.’s brother, Thomas N. Hepburn (1879-1962), also became a doctor, but he set up his practice in West Hartford, Connecticut.

Thomas married Katharine Martha Houghton (1878-1951), a feminist social reformer, suffragette, Bryn Mawr graduate, and mother of Oscar-winning actress Katharine Hepburn. The couple met when Thomas was getting his medical degree at Johns Hopkins. It appears that little Katharine took after her mother, with her iconic strength, spirit, and outspokenness.

The family would return to Maryland to visit Rev. S.S. Hepburn. Local lore tells that on the Eastern Shore is where she learned to ride a bike. Here is a young Katharine at one of those visits.

In 1977, Washington College wanted to give Katharine Hepburn an Honorary Degree. Her polite decline is the essence of the renowned private actress.

“It is most awkward to explain to you my attitude toward accepting honors of any kind. I seem to have become a sort of freak who is offered so many honors of varying degrees of desirability that I have had to decide that I must simply refuse all of them or I would become a sort of mad wreck travelling from here to there.”

Even a second request from President McLain, whose parents were married by her grandfather, Rev. Hepburn, could not persuade her.

While Hollywood or New England may be the first places that come to mind when you think of Katharine Hepburn, Kent County, Maryland, is where it all began.

 

Some items belonging to the family in our collections are a hunting rifle that belonged to Rev. S. S. Hepburn and Dr. S. S. Hepburn’s walking stick. There are World War II ration books of Katharine Hepburn’s cousin, Eleanor Hepburn Fooks of Annapolis. There is also the parish register of the I.U. Christ Church with numerous entries by Rev. S. S. Hepburn.