Kitty Etting Cohen

Born at the dawn of the nineteenth century, Kitty Etting Cohen spent her life amidst the bustle of the rapidly developing city of Baltimore. Among the younger children of Solomon Etting and his second wife, Rachel Gratz, Kitty had older sisters Richea and Miriam to look up to as a child. Hers was one of Baltimore’s leading Jewish families. During her childhood, her father played important roles in the development of shipping, commerce and politics in the city, as well as founding important civic institutions such as the water company and the Baltimore infirmary

On December 15, 1819, at age 20, Kitty married Benjamin I. Cohen, a banker working for the firm of Jacob I. Cohen, Junior and Brothers, forging a link between the city’s two key Ashkenazi families. Together they would have eleven children, of which four died in infancy, before Kitty’s early death at age thirty-seven.

Kitty Etting Cohen

early 19th century