Katherine Bloodgood

Katherine "Kitty" Spencer was born in Ithaca, New York and raised in San Diego, California.

Ballad by Edward Warren Corliss sung by Katherine Bloodgood

Bloodgood was a contralto singer of "singular power, richness, beauty and breadth", according to one reviewer, who also noted her "fine stage presence" and that she sang equally well in German and English. She performed in New York for the Manuscript Society in 1897, and at Carnegie Hall in 1898, where the New York Times reviewer said she "sang with the assurance and aplomb of an experienced artist."

In 1898, as a celebrated beauty, she sold kisses at a charity fair in St. Louis, Missouri, sometimes for as much as $500 a kiss. This publicity stunt was cited by her husband as a cause for their widely-publicized divorce a year later.

After her divorce, she was often featured on programs that included a wide range of performance genres. "She has decided to stay in the vaudeville field, at least for a time, as she finds it much more lucrative than the concert field," explained a San Francisco magazine. In 1904 Bloodgood appeared on a vaudeville bill with Blind Tom Wiggins at an opera house in Rochester, New York, just months before Wiggins's health ended his long performing career. In 1906, she was "the artistic number" on a Washington, D.C., variety program that included acrobats, comedians, and trained animals.

Katherine Spencer married twice. She was first wed to William D. Bloodgood in 1889, when she was 17 years old. This marriage ended in divorce in 1899. She married again in 1902, to Howard Hapgood Kipp, a military officer. She had one son, Elwyn Lynotte Bloodgood; she and her son may have accompanied Lieutenant Kipp to a posting on Guam in 1903, and again to an assignment in the Philippines in 1909.

Katherine Bloodgood Kipp died in 1967, aged 95 years.