The Troubled Life of Kate Pruner

The tale of Kate Pruner—where do I start? 

I believe she was the daughter of William Pruner and Elizabeth Parsons. Her story takes place in the Pennsylvania counties of Mifflin & Dauphin. My research into George Solifelt led me to her. She and George likely married around 1861. George enlisted for three months in April 1861, so they may have met and married during his first enlistment. He enlisted a total of three times, using aliases during the first two: George Sullivan and Theodore Sullivan.

By June 1868, Kate petitioned for divorce in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. This initiated a divorce by publication, with notices running through December. The notice instructed George to appear on the third Monday in January at the Harrisburg Court of Common Pleas. No record of the court’s ruling has been found—yet.

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In June 1870, Kate appeared in Mayor’s Court for keeping a bawdy and disorderly house.  The following year, she was arrested on a drunk and disorderly charge. By 1873, her name was turning up frequently in similar reports. One article referred to her as a demi-rep (a woman of doubtful reputation) who had “imbibed too much benzine.” She continued to appear in newspapers for related offenses, and in June 1889, she was actually convicted of keeping a bawdy house.  She used several aliases, including:

• Kate Cunningham
• Kate Kerns
• Kate Tippery

Kate appears to have a son named George—possibly born during her marriage to George Solifelt.  He is enumerated with her in 1870. It’s unclear whether this is the same son mentioned, though not by name, in one of the accounts of her death and news about people who had inquired about her estate. The elder George served time in Eastern & Western Penitentiary for highway robbery  1870-1871) I have not found Kate in the 1880 or 1900 census records.

Her death drew attention in newspapers across the country because it was so odd. The article below is a transcription of one that ran in the Wilkes-Barre Times.

HARRISBURG.—Two women, who had been dead in their home for 48 hours, were found Friday night by the police. They were Mrs. Annie Bear, 73 years old, and Mrs. Kate Soliffet, aged 68 years. The women lived together, and the last seen of them alive was on Wednesday night when they closed the house. Friday evening the neighbors notified the police of the women’s absence and the door was broken in. Mrs. Solifelt was found dead in bed from the effect of an overdose of morphia. Mrs. Bear was found partly dressed on a chair, sitting by a window on the second floor. The theory is that Mrs. Soliffet died first, and that Mrs. Bear’s death was caused by heart disease as the result of sudden fright over her companion’s death.

Source: “Pennsylvania Briefs,” Wilkes-Barre Times, 30 Nov 1901, p. 4, col. 4; image, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/article/wilkes-barre-times-death-of-kate-solifel/171673558/ : accessed 4 May 2025).

Did her divorce get finalized? I’m not sure. George remarried in 1893 to a woman named Mary or Mollie while he was living in the south(Arkansas, Mississippi, & Texas). He and Mary were enumerated in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, in the 1900 census—a year before Kate’s death. George had returned to Pennsylvania to resolve an issue with his U.S. Civil War pension. Ironically, he wrote to the Office of the Register of Wills protesting any will filed and claiming to be Kate’s husband. If true, then he was also a bigamist.

I still haven’t found Kate’s death certificate, but one of the accounts of her death said she was to be buried in the Paxtang Cemetery in Dauphin County, PA, on May 2nd, 1901. A FindAGrave entry was created for her with a misspelling of Solifelt, but when I contacted the cemetery, they could not find her in the records. Her grave was likely never marked. I would also like to locate the court proceedings from her divorce and her entries in the 1880 and 1900 censuses. 

Stories like Kate’s remind us that while we often refer to the past as "the good old days," the truth is more complicated. There were still tragedies, heartbreak, pain, and greed. In many ways, the struggles people faced then are not so different from those we face now.