Profile; Katherine Van Tassel-Carver

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Name: Katherine Esther Van Tassel-Carver
Age: 27 at Death.
Birthday: December 25th 1761
Death day: June 10th 1788.
Family: Mother; Anne Van Tassel, Father, Louise Van Tassel, Aunt; Lady Maria Smith, Brother; Daniel Van Tassel, Sisters; Maria, Mary, Jane, Betsy. Husband; Dorian A. Carver, Children; Johnathan Michael Carver, Margaret Anne Carver, Sister in Laws; Mary Carver, Elizabeth Carver, Aunt in Law; Judy Stone, Uncle in Law; Michael Stone.
Hobbies: Reading, Gardening, Giving her father and husband hell.
Quote: Just because I am a woman, makes me no less. I can do as much if not more than any man.'

Personality/History: Katherine has always been opinionated, the middle child of a very wealthy family, she was allowed to have at her devices until she insulted her father at the grand old age of 8 and was sent to England to live with her aunt to become a lady. Here she was educated in the best schools and trained to play piano and be a lady of society.

Manners and dignity are essential to Katherine, but so is being treated as she feels she deserves. It did not make her very popular in the English society and by 18, everyone knew she was not going to be married off. Her father wanted to send her to a nunnery or asylum to be free of her when he learned she was coming home.

She returned when she was 19, just as haughty as everyone remembered, only now she was a full-fledged educated woman, who had no taste for the country men who surrounded her in the colonies. Having spent her the better part of her life in England, the Patriots irritated her. She quickly started to refuse to leave the house once her father started marrying her sisters younger and older off to old men. She knew it was for profit and more land, but it bothered how her father treated them like cattle.

That was when she met Dorian Carver. She had seen him in passing when they were children, but never paid the egotistical boy any mind. It had been his mother who had always caught her eye. A woman who was undoubtedly what Katherine had wanted to be. Margaret Carver had been a woman on her terms, her husband was a worthless drunkard and cheat, but Margaret always held her head high and kept her family afloat. She had expected the poor woman's son would be no better than his father, he looked much like the drunkard from memory. Her father had her and her ten-year-old sister Betsy sat beside each other, telling Dorian to choose which one would be his wife. He earned a few points from her when she realized he looked put off by the idea of her baby sister. Though that meant she was the only choice.

The next Sunday when he was brought over for supper, she cornered him in the gardens shoving him down telling him to demand his bride price back that she would not be bought like cattle, he didn't hit her or yell or belittle her. He simply chuckled from the ground, cracking a joke that asking her father for money back was like asking sunshine at midnight. She couldn't help but chuckle. The two sat the rest of the evening talking. She learned that his mother had died in childbirth a few years after she left, and that he had taken over the family business. She was amused that he thought the same way of his father that she did.

Katherine started going out of her way to visit the store that Dorian ran on an errand for her father, even if she made them up. She would sometimes find herself watching through the windows at him interacting with his sisters before she would be pointed out by the girls, and always get flustered when he would look at her through the glass. One day, she made up her mind that she would make him truly notice him. She found out he had to take a trip up the Hudson to the next village over for his aunt who was a stream-stress whom Katherine would sit with often as the woman was a proper British woman. She showed up before he was to head off and convinced him to let her make the journey with him. Though, by convince, it was demand with threats of belittling him. Despite thinking, it was wildly inappropriate, he gave in and said yes. If they were to be married in three months anyway, he might as well speak to her and get to know her.

The trip alone was uneventful. He mostly asked her what England was like and listened to her recant stories of her education, but what shocked her was that he truly seemed to listen when she spoke, unlike a lot of the men in her life. On the way home, she had stopped her horse and told Dorian she wanted a flower she could see off in the woods a bit. Despite his look of annoyance, he dismounted and went to collect the flower. While he was busy with that, she had tied up the horses and started to follow him. When he turned to come back, she threw leaves in his face and took off running deeper into the woods. Dorian, confused, and a bit annoyed by her strange behavior, ran after her. The two chased each other around until she managed to trip him into some old leaves. Dorian stole a kiss while she was half laid over him, everything else was a blur of petticoats and frilled layers being undone.

By the time, they returned home, it was well past dark. Dorian had helped fix her dress and hair before they left the woods. Him being a little bit of a mess was fine, but she was a lady and they both knew if her father knew what they had done, there would be serious repercussions. Which came when she realized her cycle was no longer hitting. It had been two months since their roll in the woods when she came to him at work to tell him. He had been in one of his moods that day, and she had no care to deal with him trying to ignore her, so while he was on the latter putting something on a top shelf she yanked him down by his coat tails informing him he would do well to pay attention to her. And from the floor, she had his attention as she informed him she was carrying his child. The look in his eyes both warmed her heart and terrified her. She knew he would take care of her, but her father would be furious at them both. They swore to keep it secret.

Dorian tried everything in his power to push the wedding forward, but the more he pushed, the more her father would get annoyed at him. When the day came, it was a small, intimate ceremony. Only their closest family memories were there. At the reception, she heard her father telling Dorian he needed to sell the store off and come work for him at the bank. Her father was both a banker and a magistrate. The idea of her father having her husband under his thumb terrified her, but she knew Dorian would agree to keep from making waves.

The first month was wonderful, they were happy and adorable, but then she started to show, and they were suddenly the talk of gossip. As their child grew within her, so did the slander behind their backs. She was terrified for her husband's reputation, despite being an egotistical brat, he was still a generally good man. Her father started calling her home for days to weeks on end, denying her to see her husband. She knew he was furious at them, but he wouldn't out right say it. At least until the body of Johnathan Carver was brought home to rest in Tarrytown once more. Then, part of her woke up that had been lying under her girlish crush for the man she was wed. She told her father off and packed her bags, returning to where she felt she was needed. Coming home, she found the dead man laid in her and her husband's bed with him, his sisters aunt and uncle sitting around the body along with the Midwife, Johnathan's mistress. Though, Dorian and his father never saw eye to eye. Once she had put the girls to bed, she returned to find him sobbing at the edge of the bed. He had a lot of guilt for convincing his father to go to war. She wrapped her arms around him and held him from behind until he calmed enough to come to bed with her in the room with the girls. The next morning, Johnathan was laid to rest beside his wife. Dorian seemed in better spirits, though something told her it was an act. The more she paid attention to the things he did, the more she could see through his words.

She learned to read him, and that was when she started to put her foot down. If he spoke something she didn't like she would tell him and always in a harsh way.

When the child was born, Katherine nearly had a nervous breakdown when she realized the boy's hand was deformed, scared it was god punishing them for their sin. Her husband amazed her again by not rejecting the child as most would. Claiming the boy to be the most lovely child to bless the earth. But they were denied baptism of the baby or returning to the church unless they took punishment for their sin. Which was nine lashings to each parents of a child born too soon. Katherine was terrified as they were walked to the center of town. Her father watching as she went to hand him the baby so she could join her husband. Her father moved an arm to hers and told her to stay as Dorian was made to kneel, his jacket and shirt removed. Her father explained that Dorian had come to them and explained it was all his doing, that he had seduced her and wanted to take the punishment himself. 18 lashings with a leather whip, nine for him and nine for his wife.

Once the punishment passed, they were able to get their son baptized and were welcomed back into the church with forgiveness. She knew she was in love with Dorian, but something told her it was not fully returned at first. When their son Johnathan was nearly six months old and winter had come hard she learned of Dorian's poor health, he had been bed rested for nearly a month and a half, and he started being more openly affectionate to her at home, whenever she was laying down with him, he would talk to her more openly. It made her happy, at least until their first large fight.

As sick as he was, she caught him out chopping the firewood. She had intended to do it since he was ill, but when she told him he needed to get back in the house, he made the mistake of telling her it was not a woman's place to handle such work. That she needed to tend to the boy. She almost smacked him, but he went into a coughing fit and nearly feel on the ax himself. By the time she got him inside, they were both screaming at one another loud enough to not only make the baby cry but to scare his sisters. She went off, leaving him with the crying children to fetch his uncle Michael to tend to the wood. Sitting with a smug look as Micheal ripped her husband apart for being out of bed, much less chopping wood. By the time the next autumn rolled around she was with child for the second time and this time much happier about it. No one could judge her or her family, and they were getting a new house. Her father had gifted it to them after evicting the old tenants.

It was two floors with three bedrooms upstairs and a den downstairs with the kitchen and sitting area. It was a much more befitting home in her mind for a Merchant and his family, than the home he had been born in, the home that did not even have flooring. The new house was a dream come true, outside of being more drafty. When the winter came, they were ready. Dorian had spent the warm months making sure the wood was ready and even paying a few people to have more in place. When the sickness took him, Katherine found herself overwhelmed and emotional. Dorian was worse than the year before, both of his sisters were no help with their brother sick and the baby was into everything and Dorian was too ill to help his wife. She had woken up terrified one morning thinking Dorian had passed in his sleep because he was horribly cold, she had started to sob until his eyes opened.

Though things were hard, namely in the winters, with the addition of Margaret into the family and his sisters going to the next county for education for the spring and summer each year it made things easier for her. She felt incredibly lucky with her happy little family. Though Dorian would often say something stupid about her being a woman and knowing her place which would get them fighting, they usually got on well. Even when fighting, she couldn't stay mad at him long.

When Margaret turned three, Dorian's sister Mary came to her in confidence, informing her that she had seen her brother go off with a bar maid. Katherine was furious, and when Dorian came home, she kept to herself, sickened when he tried to kiss her. She held it together despite being more angry at him and refusing to share the bed with him until the third day when she started screaming at him with a knife. He sent the kids off to his aunts and tried to talk reason to her, that was when she demanded to know about the other woman, Dorian was completely lost. She for once made the mistake of pushing the wrong button. She compared him to his father, and he backhanded her. He had never raised a hand to her before, even when she would hit him. She didn't even let it sink in, she popped him as hard as she could in the face and knew when it connected, she had seriously hurt him. But him hitting her had been a shock to the system. She told him if he ever touched her again, she would make a woman of him, and he swore on the children he was not cheating on her.

A week later, he pulled Mary before her and made her confess and admit she had made it up because she felt her brother no longer loved her and her sister. Katherine made sure to chastise Dorian if he did not spend enough time with the girls from that point.

When she turned 27 Dorian came home with a letter and told her not to show her father, it was addressed to him, but when she opened it another letter was sealed inside for 'Lady Van Tassel' She knew the writing, it was her brother whom she missed horribly. He did not know of the children, but he had heard of her married years before. Her son was now eight and her daughter six. Her brother wanted her and her husband to come see a play he was in, in Manhattan, and she begged Dorian, whom simply laughed and said he would see to it. She had asked for things yes, but never begged. She knew he would not deny her or fail her.

When the two arrived in Manhattan, it really sank in how under educated Dorian truly was, he never really went further than the county line from Tarrytown. Everything fascinated him, while all that she could think of was this was the first time since they got married that they were without a house full of children. She knew what she wanted. When not to showings, or lunches with her brother and husband, she had Dorian, and she locked up in the hotel room. She felt like a princess, having her husband for once publicly openly affectionate with her. Holding her hand, kissing her cheeks and not caring who saw, no one knew them outside of her brother. Whom at first it bothered her, but she quickly got over the fact that he was homosexual. It helped that Dorian didn't seem that bothered by it when her brother explained that was why he ran away. It made her proud of Dorian that when she was stunned silent that he merely said 'Everyone has a right to happiness, I am glad you have yours.' She realized he was right and planned to try to keep the view herself.


While Dorian was asleep one evening, she confided in her brother that she was with child again. Explaining that she had not told her husband yet because she wanted to surprise him on his birthday later in the month, telling her brother if it was a boy it would be named after him, a girl after the heroine of the play. He made Daniel swim with pride.

Over dinner that night, Daniel Introduced them to Phoebe and Matthew Smith. A brother and sister who were in town that he had befriended the winter before, Katherine took a liking to Phoebe right away while Matthew excused himself and Dorian kept drifting asleep at her side while the women talked. Hours passed quickly until she felt Dorian shake her shoulder. She had not even realized he had awoken. He told her they needed to return to bed. The next day was long travel. She asked him to be quiet since she was talking, Phoebe simply giggled and smiled a little too wide at them, telling Katherine her and her husband were adorable.

Dorian, quite unlike himself, seemed in no mood to deal with hearing the other woman and leaned down, tipping up Katherine's chin, kissing her long and hard before the other woman simply saying 'come to bed with me.' Katherine could not deny that, and bid Phoebe good night and hurried off with Dorian. Once her husband was asleep, she snuck out to look for her new friend once more but instead found her brother who tried to coax her into his room, with the promise of whatever passions she dreamt of he could make real. She smacked him and told him he was a vile creature, and quickly returned to bed with Dorian.

The next day was a long journey home which they started late due to her brother conning them to one last breakfast, and it got them home by mid-morning, Katherine knew Dorian had not slept on the way home despite being quiet. They had spoken a lot about having another child and moving to the city, which made her heart swell, but she knew he had not rested and yet as soon as they got home he kissed the children, hugged her and his sisters and headed off to work. It hurt her feelings a bit that he would not take another day for the family, but she understood her father was a bastard to deal with, and her husband hated to be idle.

When he returned that night, he looked exhausted but still took all the time to play games with the children, and let his sisters play with his hair she had been convincing him for a while to grow out. Once everyone was in bed, Dorian started to ask her about simple things, but she knew what he was after, all the talks about children. She knew she needed to tell him soon, but he was being so loving and his birthday was just another two weeks. The bedroom door flew open and Johnathan ran in crying, claiming to have seen a monster outside his window. Katherine was about to ask him to go back to bed, but Dorian got up and carried their son out, telling him there was no monster, and he would die before he let a monster get them.

A few hours later while everyone slept a monster did get them, Katherine's last moments were of waking from a slumber realizing her strange friend the city was above her strangling her and though she tried to fight Phoebe off she couldn't move, she couldn't do more than whimper, hearing Dorian's tired voice ask if she was alright Phoebe answered… trying to sound like her saying it was just a nightmare, and she wanted to be held. Then life left her body, Dorian didn't protect her like he swore hours before.