People

Kate Hanna was born on December 26, 1871, to Howard Melville and Kate Smith Hanna Sr. Kate’s older sister, Gertrude Haskell, lived in the next house east, and her younger brother, Howard Hanna, lived two houses east. Kate attended Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut and Miss Heloise E. Hersey’s School in Boston.

She was an heiress to the M. A. Hanna Company fortune and one of its three most significant stockholders.  She inherited the Pebble Hill Plantation in Thomasville, Georgia, from her father, which she owned from 1901 to 1936. She commissioned Abram Garfield to design more buildings on the plantation, including the Log Cabin School, the Plantation Store, the Loggia Wing, the Pump House, the Waldorf, and the lavish Cow Barn.

In 1901, she founded the Visiting Nurse Association. In 1905, she helped to establish the Cleveland chapter of the American Red Cross. Kate’s other interests included Lakeside and University Hospitals Case Medical Center. She served on Lakeside’s Board of Lady Managers and as a trustee of University Hospitals and Babies and Children’s Hospital. She was also a leader in transforming the Hospital’s nursing program into the Western Reserve University School of Nursing, Cleveland’s first collegiate nursing school.

Kate married Robert Livingston Ireland Sr. on May 2, 1894. They had two children, Robert Livingston Ireland, Jr. “Liv,” born on February 1, 1895, and Elizabeth (Poe), born on October 31, 1897.

Robert and Kate Ireland divorced in 1918. Kate remarried to Perry Harvey on February 12, 1923. He had been living as a bachelor at his cousin Melanie Cushing’s Breezy Bluff home.

Perry Williams Harvey, the cousin of Melanie Cushing, was born in Cleveland on May 10, 1869, to Henry Allyn and Mary (Williams) Harvey. He was educated in Cleveland public schools and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University in 1891.

Perry was president of the Cleveland Board of Health during the Baehr and Baker administrations. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Cleveland chapter of the American Red Cross, director of the Cleveland Folding Machine Co. Civic responsibilities included being a trustee of Lakeside Hospital, Visiting Nurse Association, Cleveland Community Fund, Welfare Federation, and the Anti-Tuberculosis League.

He was a member of The Country, Chagrin Valley, Kirtland, Mid-Day, Rowfant, Tavern, and Union clubs plus the Tennis Club of New York. Perry, along with some of his Yale buddies, decided to form a club. All were avid horsemen, so they decided it should be a racing club.

Perry died on May 24, 1932. Kate died on May 15, 1936, at her Pebble Hill Plantation one Georgia. She was buried alongside Perry in Pebble Hill Plantation Family Cemetery in Thomasville, Georgia.

Kate left an estate of over $4,250.000. She left two-fifths to her daughter Elizabeth and two-fifths to her son Robert and his wife Margaret. Equal shares of the remainder went to her four grandchildren, Louise, Robert, Kate, and Melville.