As young teenager Katie Brown rose to read the Emancipation Proclamation before a crowded South Meeting House celebration in 1882, she drew her courage from her grandmother, Annette Brown.

Katie lived with her grandmother on Portsmouth’s waterfront, where Mrs. Brown is believed to have taken in strangers seeking shelter as they escaped from slavery in the 1840s. Her husband was from Pennsylvania, where ships often embarked for northern ports carrying fugitives. Katie’s father and her uncle both served as sailors in the Civil War. By 1883, the household included only Katie and her grandmother.